The Imposition of Conscience

This is without a doubt the best email concerning work that I will receive in my life:

2011-01-02T02:01:00.001-08:00

Hello,

Here is content as promised.
Please give me a few ballbusting stories.
It should be tempting, teasing and main focus is "ballbusting"...

btw, I always check all content with copyscape.. so, please, don't copy phrases..

I will be waiting,

To which I say: okay!

A more interesting job situation:

2010-08-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Following is a copy/paste of an email exchange I had with a man while looking for work on Craigslist.

CL posting:

IM LOOKING FOR A LOT OF WRITERS WHO CAN TACKLE EVERYDAY ISSUES BUT ALWAYS MAKE YA GIGGLE DURING IT! YES I DONT MIND THE WORD "FUCK" THERE I SAID IT!! IF YOU WRITE ABOUT RELIGION THATS GREAT BUT I WANT YOU TO BE A SMART ASS WHILE DOING SO.
WHERE ARE ALL THE SMART ASSES WHO HAVE A BRAIN TOO?

My response:

Subject:

Look: you should probably just hire me now so we can skip this whole boring process and get on with the humor.
Inbox
X
Dear sir:

It would appear that you have engaged upon a quest to find writers capable of writing with wit and humour, and it would also appear that the purpose of this email is to inform you of a passing interest in doing so myself. I could regale you with tales and examples of my skillset, which include things like killing dinosaurs with kitchen knives and stepping on ant-hills, but that would be selling us both short.

That's because I am emailing you, instead, to taunt your excessive usage of the caps-lock button. You see, sir, or maybe madame - I have no idea and you did not provide enough context for me to state with any level of assurance - the 12th was not Billie Mays day, the day of the year in which everyone speaks in all-capitals to honor the fallen infomercial spokesman, and yet you persist in your shouty-madness throughout the length of the post.

What nerve! I thought, what madness! How angry must this employer be! Perhaps, rather, you sought to ensure that your job listing was well-understood and avoided the ambiguity of properly-capitalized-words. Well, dear sir, I feel that I should tell you THAT I AM VERY CONFUSED BECAUSE SHOUTY WORDS TEND TO CONFUSE ME.

If you give me a topic or a website to write for and pay me sufficiently (I'll work for dimes, really), I can guarantee that I will make not only you but also the entirety of your readers laugh. I'd love to see another applicant boast that and say it with any real sincerity.

IF YOU PREFER, I CAN WRITE ARTICLES IN ALL CAPITALS.

Attached is a copy of my resume. I'll hear from you soon, yeah?

--
Daniel A. Russ
Composition Sorcerer, Flint, Michigan

and then his response:

lol. wow I am getting bashed cause of the caps. you see to I am a cunning legiunist. but the problem is I cant spell it!! Im more lazy than anything so the caps and punctuation suffer!!..
I like your style me man. I tell ya what/ give me a week or two and I will e mail ya the site and we will see if its something you want to do. at that time I can explain money and everything else.
fair?

thanks
Lenny

Sounds fantastic to me, anyway.

2010-03-26T22:35:00.001-07:00

Interviewing Strangers is Terrifying

2010-02-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

So earlier tonight, I went to the Bioshock 2 release at Gamestop in an attempt to learn how to interview people to produce a semblance of a story. I think that it went reasonably well - I spoke with multiple people in the crowd waiting to buy the game and spoke with one man in particular that I thought was interesting. His words can be found at the link above.
..and the process was fucking nerve-wracking.
For the first time in months, I sat inside of my car, smoking fiendishly, and assuring myself that yes, I was fully capable of walking up to strangers and asking them questions without invitation. Yes, I can be social with a purpose. Yes, I can do the games journalism thing.
And, well, I did it. I'm not sure it was a great piece, but it's a start. In the future - notably, at the next Flint Video Gamers' Club thing on Friday - I plan to do essentially the same thing, but on a wider scale and have a more fully-developed story. I suppose we'll see.

wow.com Cover Letter

2010-01-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

Well .. here is my cover letter that I'm about to send to wow.com to try and score a columnist position. Let's hope trying to be clever, for once, pays off.

Greetings, editors!

I won’t lie to you: I’m a relatively new reader to wow.com. Why is that? Well, I could tell you that I had never been able to read before coming wow.com and that it delivered unto me an epiphany of literacy, or I could tell you that my eyes were gouged out by red-hot forks and then eaten by huge, flightless birds, only to have been restored mere days ago when a friend mentioned your website, or I could even tell you that I had been trapped deep underground without Internet access by hairy giants, whom I had to slay with little, pointy sticks to escape in a series of daring combat maneuvers - but all of these things would be lies told to explain why I hadn’t read wow.com before. As you may know, lies are not true, and none of these are the reasons I did not before read wow.com.

Rather, I simply did not know about it - but that’s pretty boring, I think, so you guys can choose any of the three reasons listed above for why I did not visit wow.com before. What you believe is entirely your business.

I didn’t decide to send you this email to tell you about why I haven’t been reading your website for the last few years, or any of my heroic exploits that allowed me to do so - but rather why I started reading it, will continue to read it, and why I think you should let me write for it.

You see, I quite like wow.com; it’s intelligent, well-written, and professionally-orchestrated. I could list another fifteen or so adjectives about why wow.com is great and why I feel as though I should be a part of it, but I expect you guys have a pretty good idea of what those adjectives might be - so I won’t waste any more of your time with them. Instead, I’ll move on to why you should hire me to write a column for you.

Reason one: I play Warcraft far more than I should, which I’m pretty sure is a sign that I should either be writing about it, or that I should enroll in a gaming addiction center.

Reason two: I already write about videogames constantly on my website, 40oz1game.com. I also drink a lot of beer while doing so, hence the theme of the sight: computer games and beer.

Reason three: I’m reasonably-okay at writing, and every website can always use more at-least reasonably-okay writers that use a lot of hyphens. I would like to say that I am TOTALLY AWESOME at the craft, but I am a humble man, and I will leave that judgment to you, dear editors.

So here is my pitch: I’d like to write a weekly or bi-weekly column focusing on me thinking about issues and aspects of Warcraft that some people might not, but are certain to react to. Sometimes, I think it will be fun to work with contemporary stuff that all players have experienced on some level - such as the LFG system, and why I think it might destroy the best part of Warcraft. (This article, published on my website originally, can be found here: http://www.40oz1game.com/2010/01/playing-so-hard-i-forgot-to-drink-world-of-warcraft-and-the-lfg-system-and-why-it-sucks/)

The basic idea of the piece, if you are not inclined to read my analysis of it, is that the LFG System removes the best basis for making new pals: meeting, bleeding, and dying with them in dungeons.

I’ve also got a piece in progress about how both the Alliance and Horde expeditions into Northrend are basically endorsements of the Western process of subjugating less-advanced cultures, and another piece about how Warcraft is an enormous endorsement of capitalism where literally every aspect of play is made into a commodity.

I don’t think that I’m going too far out on a limb here when I say that players will react to these ideas - and I think they will mostly disagree with them! That would be pretty much awesome, as I’m used to having people disagree with me, and if it can stimulate conversation on your website - then all the better!

In closing, dear editors, I very much hope that you will consider my proposal with love and adoration. Failing that, I would hope for maybe a begrudging respect, or maybe even mild approval. I’m willing to work for basically nothing, as I am already a poor college student, and not getting paid for work is something that I’ve been doing for years.

A final thing to keep in mind, dear editors: I killed giants for you - with tiny little sticks - just so that I could escape the deep, dark dungeons to read wow.com. Surely, that’s deserving of a columnist position.

Sincerely,

Daniel A. Russ

Various Updates - Stay Out of Trouble, Kids

2010-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

So I recently found work-study employment with a great local program called Launch. The basic idea is that they provide micro, community-oriented loans, workspace, and workshops for entrepreneurs in Michigan-based colleges. Although I have objections with the system (most notably the great potential for gentrification), I think it's a great program - it helps stimulate the local Flint economy, and gets great ideas into succesful businesses. Even the staunch socialist within me likes the idea.

However, there was a complication - my criminal record. For the sake of posterity, I thought that I would post my explanation of that here - specifically, because it encapsulates my frustration with the entire ordeal.

I was recently informed that I was to explain to you the circumstances of my disorderly conduct charge as it appears on my record. What happened was a party and the consumption of alcohol, which culminated in an ever-increasing level of volume that became an issue once much of the party moved outdoors. When the police arrived, instead of acting calmly and following their instructions, myself and a few friends protested - loudly and drunkenly. This lead to an arrest and a small set of charges, which I was able to reduce to disorderly conduct by way of my lawyer, a set of fines, a year's worth of probation, and a sizable number of hours for community service.

I paid my fines, met every requirement of probation, and completed my community service working for the Mott Community College newspaper. Although I very much regret what I did, and the specter of the charge has haunted me for some time, I recognize that it was the folly of a younger man; several years have passed since the incident, and my record has remained entirely clean and I have stayed out of trouble.

In other news, I've applied yet again to work for mmorpg.com. Mr. Wood didn't like one of my favorite pieces on the objection that it was a little too subjective - that's understandable, but I still think that it was an excellent piece. When I put the finalized version over on 40oz, I'll amend this post to include a link to it. I'm also sending out an application to work as a freelancer for examiner.com - we'll see how that goes. Finally, I'm putting together a pitch for wow.com as a columnist - the basic idea is to be a stuffy academic bitching about thematic troubles in WoW. When I send the pitch, I'll throw it up on here.

2010-01-17T20:24:00.001-08:00

Is it better to have th crowd or to be truthful/correct?

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Hooray!

2009-12-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

I recently received this email;

Daniel,

My name is Jon Wood, I'm the Managing Editor at MMORPG.com.

I would be interested to see a full pass made at the WoW article that
you pitched to us in your last email. If you are interested, please let
me know. I would like to see the revised version by Wednesday, December
9th if at all possible.

Jon Wood

This means that the opening guns of my career have been fired. Awesome!

Further good news: two of my poems, Pissgrid and Failing in Love, were published in Broadside.

Brevity is stupid.

2009-12-02T20:14:00.001-08:00

Today, during a message exchange with a friend on Facebook, she told me that she thought something I said was beautiful. It is my response to her apology for being long-winded. Since it just so happens that a) I can be a very vain and self-centered person, and b) this is entirely my blog and I get to do with it as I please, I will therefore post said beautiful line in an attempt to further inflate my ego:

The one thing that I will never be irritated by is long-windedness; there are many vices in writing, but failing to establish clarity in favor of brevity is the foulest.

The Veteran and the Supplicant: On the Methods and Implications of Modes of Address During the Freeport Debate

2009-12-02T13:13:00.000-08:00

Beneath the cut is an examination of the modes of address used by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in what is perhaps the most important debate in the series of debates they undertook in their respective campaigns for the Senate seat in Illinois. Specifically, it looks at the potential implications of Lincoln's use of "Judge" and "Judge Douglas" as a method of address, and Douglas' use of "Black Republicans" when speaking to and about Lincoln.

It's pretty boring stuff if you're not a) into the Civil War, particularly the preceding politics, and/or b) into rhetoric and how stuff gets named and what that means. In other words, you will probably not want to read this.

Although the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the campaign for the Senate seat in the election of 1858 for Illinois were often quite similar, one in particular has been chosen for analysis due to the development of what would come to be called the Freeport Doctrine. During the course of the debate, Lincoln demanded of Douglas whether or not a territory could vote on whether or not to allow slavery in its constitution - as per Douglas’ conception of popular sovereignty - or if territories were bound to the obiter dictum delivered at the conclusion of the Dred Scott case, in which Chief Justice Taney claimed that neither the states nor the territories had a constitutional right to bar slavery from existing in any fashion.

Douglas responded to Lincoln with what has become known as the Freeport Doctrine, in which he argued that any territory could bar slavery from existing if it so chose merely by way of the adoption of laws and their enforcement; if a state or territory legislated laws that barred slavery, or if the local population’s law enforcement agencies refused to uphold slavery, then slavery could not exist in that territory. In the words of Douglas;

“It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations.”

The Freeport Doctrine was an elegant solution to what Lincoln doubtless believed to be an irresolvable conflict for Douglas.

While the historical high point of the Freeport Debate may have been the development of the Freeport Doctrine, it is but a pale shade of the debate in its entirety, in which each man demonstrated their full rhetorical strength. Douglas’ flashy, Washington, D.C.-tinged and highly educated tone, which he utilizes to appear as though he is speaking from a position of authority in which he knows not merely which policies are best but how - and has the power - to enact them, contrasted heavily with Lincoln’s homespun and cordial attitude, which caused him to appear as though he were supplicating humbly to a greater power in the hopes of great social change. The sensibilities and beliefs - as well as ethics - of each candidate come out strongly in their respective speaking sections, and I feel quite clearly in the fashion that each of the men chooses to address the other.

In the course of externally researching perspectives on the Freeport Debate, a common consensus seems to emerge between the impeccable logic and politeness of Lincoln, contrasted with the ravings and crassness of Douglas. While it is true that Douglas is more prone to insults and personal attacks than Lincoln (if only in raw quantity), I am not entirely convinced that Lincoln is deserving of the high pedestal upon which his speaking segments seem to have been placed by contemporary and historical critics, or that he was any more noble in his efforts at Freeport than Douglas; rather, it would seem to me that Lincoln is equally as deceitful and deliberate as Douglas, albeit in a substantially more subtle fashion. That is not to say that Douglas was incapable of subtlety - indeed, what seems to be his crowning achievement in the Freeport Debate was his ability to ensnare Lincoln into choosing party loyalty and reliability or personal integrity.

However, a perhaps more proper place to begin an examination of both Lincoln and Douglas’ rhetorical methods might best be the fashion in which they addresses one another; always, Lincoln refers to Douglas as either “[the] Judge” or “Judge Douglas.” Topically, this appears a cordiality and a polite reverence for Douglas’ station as a legal authority. However, it also serves a more subliminally coercive purpose; to alienate the audience from Douglas. Merely by referring to Douglas exclusively by his title, Lincoln paints him not only as an authority figure but rather a figure displaced from the common man listening to the speech, as presumably, the average citizen of 19th century Freeport Illinois had a far lesser social standing than that of a judge. Further, Lincoln is also removing Douglas from the pool of even the social and economic elite; while lawyers and doctors and perhaps even politicians are arguably seen as being higher on the social ladder, surely a judge is even higher yet.

This device of Lincoln’s, while difficult to actually determine the efficacy of, served if nothing else to draw a line between the two candidates; Lincoln, a lawyer, on one side, and Douglas, a judge and senator, on the other. Referring to Douglas as a judge also draws Douglas as a figure that has been involved in Washington and in the legal system for some time, as both positions he held infer a great deal of experience and time spent. As was seen in the presidential election of 2008, a candidate of change can rally their base in opposition of the established order, which when seen in the context of a new face, can appear as confined in their methods, dated, and possibly even corrupt, and can propel the candidate of change into office far faster than the candidate of experience and knowledge – provided the political climate favors change.

It should here be noted that this is a contemporary perspective concerning social status; in modern, American society, individuals that have attained the status of judge tend to be looked upon with more reverence and respect than would, for example, a sales clerk or carpenter be. Even were members of American society in the mid-19th century possessing of such high social standing as judge not given the reverence that they are today, Lincoln’s insistence on the title drew a clear line between, if nothing else, the economic status of Douglas and the typical citizen.

Although I was unable to determine whether or not Douglas was aware of what Lincoln was doing by referring to him as Judge Douglas, either intentionally on Lincoln’s part or not, Douglas seems to have played directly into Lincoln’s hands when his turn to speak came. Douglas’ arguments, while brilliantly phrased and structured, tended to refer to his experience as a legislator and his knowledge of the players in Washington, D.C.; although they make clear to the audience that Douglas knew the inner workings of both parties quite well (Douglas even going so far as to detail the political alliances made to, in Douglas’ words, “Abolitionize the two parties” (p. 18)), his responses also demonstrate to the audience that he is a politician and not a typical citizen.

Douglas himself wields the sword of labeling quite effectively during his speaking segments, although he utilizes it in a substantially different way. Lincoln’s use of “Judge Douglas” places the spotlight on Douglas as an individual, and not a member of the collective entity of the Democrat Party, which can have the effect of causing Douglas’ decisions, policies, and beliefs to be his in exclusivity - which is exactly the opposite of the effect that Douglas himself created when speaking against Lincoln. Instead of creating a rhetorical device of a form of hero worship as Lincoln did, Douglas instead chose to frame Lincoln as a mere - but inextricable - extension of the Republican Party.

More specifically, Douglas framed Lincoln as an extension of the Black Republican Party, a phrase which he used more than twenty times during the course of his ninety minute speaking segment, and in doing so he accomplished a number of interesting things. Chiefly, he hammered the point that the Republican Party was attempting to grant universal and equal rights, on a national scale, to blacks, and by calling the Republican Party the Black Republican Party he created a label that would endure with the audience and clearly link black rights with the Republican Party. The label of Black Republican is an important one due to the fashion in which Douglas referred to Lincoln; that is, generally, he did not, instead referring to the Republican Party as a whole rather than Lincoln as an individual. However, it should be noted that while Douglas avoids mentioning Lincoln by name overmuch, he does so in a couple of particular instances - most notably, as seen below, when Douglas is attempting to paint Lincoln as a liar or hypocrite.

In order to effectively understand why Douglas attempted to tie Lincoln to what he called the Black Republican Party, it is first necessary to examine the established Republican Party platform and some of the responses Lincoln made to questions asked by Douglas. The Republican platform, and some of the resolutions that it passed, consisted of often strong abolitionist language as can be seen in the resolutions passed by the Rockford Convention of 1854 that Douglas implied was the primary platform of the party;

“...to restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of Free Territories; to repeal and entirely abrogate the Fugitive Slave Law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more Slave States in the Union; to exclude slavery from all the Territories over which the General Government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquisition of any more territories, unless the introduction of slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited.”
Importantly, the resolution also contained the following clause; “...we will support no man for office under the General or State Government who is not positively committed to these principles.”

With this platform in mind, it is now necessary to examine some of the responses made by Lincoln in his first speaking session, in which he answers a series of questions that Douglas presented to him, presumably, during the debate prior to the one held in Freeport. These questions seem to have been pulled specifically from the resolution passed at the Rockford Convention; for example, question one asks, “I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law?” Lincoln’s response: “I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law.” Another example; in question three, Douglas asks “I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make?” Lincoln’s reply: “I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.” (p. 1-2)

As can be seen even in this small sampling of responses from Lincoln, he clearly is not a politician terribly concerned with towing the party line at the cost of everything else; rather, he has reasoned, thoughtful, and careful responses to the questions (which are later explained in greater detail) that Douglas presented, and it is precisely for this reason that Douglas seeks to tie Lincoln to what he refers to as the Black Republican Party. Douglas is attempting, I believe, to distance Lincoln from his own answers in the eyes of the audience so that the more radical platform of the Republican Party - which may have not been entirely palatable for citizens of mid-19th century Illinois - were also the policies of Lincoln himself.

Clearly, Lincoln’s responses are substantially different than what would be expected were he a politician that heavily identified with the Republican Party as framed by Douglas. It would initially seem that Lincoln’s responses might undermine what Douglas was attempting by referring to Lincoln as a member of the party, but rather, it appears that the entire machination was rather a shrewd logic trap laid out by Douglas, as can be seen towards the end of Douglas’ speaking section. After laying out the platforms built by two separate Republican conventions, Douglas hones in on a particular stipulation found therein; that, as quoted above, “...we will support no man for office under the General or State Government who is not positively committed to these principles.”

Douglas demands of the audience:

“Thus you see every member from your Congressional District voted for Mr. Lincoln, and they were pledged not to vote for him unless he was committed to the doctrine of no more Slave States, the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. Mr. Lincoln tells you to-day that he is not pledged to any such doctrine. Either Mr. Lincoln was then committed to those propositions, or Mr. Turner violated his pledges to you when he voted for him. Either Lincoln was pledged to each one of those propositions, or else every Black Republican Representative from this Congressional District violated his pledge of honor to his constituents by voting for him.”

(p. 21)

Although Lincoln responds in his closing segment eloquently and effectively, explaining that “...if he will find any of these persons who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I say now, I will resign, or rather retire from the race, and give him no more trouble,” (p. 25) it is difficult to determine on which side the audience will fall. On one hand, Lincoln was quite clear in his opening speech that “If any interrogatories which I shall answer I go beyond the scope of what is within these platforms, it will be perceived that no one is responsible but myself,” (p. 1) suggesting that he is not necessarily entirely in favor of all of the policies of the Republican platform. Conversely, this also suggests that either Lincoln does not care for the platform of the party and will act in what he presumably believes to be in the best interest of the country, or that he deceived the Republicans in order to secure his nomination. What makes this exchange interesting is that the issue would likely not have even arisen had not Douglas forced the issue, and it gave Douglas an opportunity to lay against Lincoln claims of deception that he may not have had otherwise, or alternatively, that the Republican Party is willing to sell its values out in exchange for a strong enough candidate. This is significant because, often, even mere claims and of untrustworthiness and deception can have a profound impact on how an individual may view a public figure like Lincoln. This can be seen in widespread distrust of Al Gore during his presidential campaign due to his mere affiliation with President Clinton over the Monica Lewinski scandal.

Lincoln’s insistence on the labeling of Douglas as Judge Douglas may have served him poorly in the end, as it is entirely possible - and perhaps likely, given the election results - that the constituency preferred a candidate of experience, clout and otherness (possibly the constituency preferred to elect someone they considered their better to lead and represent them?) than the homespun and relatable nature of Lincoln, whom went to seemingly great lengths in his rhetoric to establish how like the common citizen he was.

Ultimately, it would seem that the electorate was more persuaded and found more value in the character and words of Douglas, as he was re-elected to his Senate seat. Although Douglas’ Freeport Doctrine - and, by extension, popular sovereignty - seems to have been widely regarded as the superior policy regarding slavery in mid-19th century Illinois and perhaps the deciding factor in the election, his methods of delivery and discourse must have been equally as critical as these were the engines by which he convinced the electorate. Regardless of how strong or compelling any given policy may be, it must have an effective speaker in order to convince the masses to enact it - lest it fall to the floor to linger among the doubtless thousands of well-conceived but poorly voiced policy plans and ideas that will never see the light of legislation.

A Note on Works Cited:
All quotations and thoughts used above are based on the transcript of the Freeport Debate, found at:
1. Bartleby.com, Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, http://www.bartleby.com/251/
Additionally, notes taken in class as well as the Wikipedia entry on the Freeport Doctrine (located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeport_Doctrine) were consulted for date and name accuracy.

Fiction Contest

2009-11-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

I entered a short piece for a 100 word flash-fiction contest over on Boing Boing. The theme was, "Found in space." I'm putting my entry here for, uh, posterity.

What astonished them was the sheer lack of anything worth finding in space; for thousands of years, they probed and mined, sent out satellites and men, and waited in anticipation for progressively more complicated sorts of waves to relay news to their home planet. But that news was always the same: we cannot condense and harvest this cloud, nor can we extract enough water for this planet to be at all useful. Still, they expanded, spread out like a cancer in the dark, always searching for a new sector of space that they might be able to feed on.

Multimedia message

2009-11-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Multimedia message

2009-11-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

Multimedia message

2009-09-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Worldshift

2009-08-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

In the span between late-night and sunrise, something strange happened in the world. It was almost as if every physical law governing existence and interaction shifted almost imperceptibly; in fact, it was imperceptible, because nobody really noticed. But they had a feeling.

Gravity pulled every object ever-so-slightly more down to the world. Cohesian mechanics relaxed by a thousandth of a degree, and motor vehicles, while still functioning effectively, seemed to be somehow .. off. It was difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to explain; most people, when they realized it, saw it only on the periphery of their conscious mind. To explain it would have been like explaining their rationale in getting spooked when at home alone and having to leave for fear of something terrible happening - their was no rationality to it, no system of logic, no good reason. But they knew something was wrong, and they were compelled to act upon it.

Yet no one thought to do anything about this shift in the world. Nuclear physicists puzzled over what the implications of increased output in their power plants meant, and how it might affect safety guidelines. Airline pilots felt that they were slipping in between clouds, their oily surfaces pouring over the aluminum casting of the great Boeings of the sky instead of penetrating them as they had the day before. Researchers attempting to harness quantum mechanics into computer power suddenly managed to successfully develop 5-bit states that actually worked, and worked flawlessly - for the first time, they were able to predict exactly where a neutron would be in its orbit. This was most troubling to them of all, but it shouldn’t have been - somehow, the most difficult aspect of their profession, uncertainty, had been removed from the equation.

I first noticed it when driving to a coffee shop from the bank in my home town. While rounding the curve of Court Street in between Center and Ballenger, I noticed the frame of my car diverge, each mechanical component expanding ever-so-slightly, my seat growing wider as fuel efficiency fell. I could see the other vehicles on the road diverging, too, although they were each doing so to different degrees. Bizarrely, this seemed to have no impact on their performance aside from a vague drifting to the right or to the left on the road. I began to wonder if maybe my insides were diverging, too.

I decided that they were. My general anxiety during the mornings was removed, and the standard nausea that accompanies the span between wakefulness and a caffeinated state was removed - for the first time in months, I felt as if everything was right in the world upon waking up. This troubles me greatly - for if I believe everything is right in the world, but know that it is not, how can I attempt to address any of those wrongs? I am still not sure. My edge - my precious, desperate, anxiety-riddled edge has gone missing, and I am filled with a grave fear of the consequences. Will I still be able to function? Will I be able to stoke the flames of hatred deep within me so that I might find success? Will the loss of what separates me from other men begin to show in my diffusion into the crowds, into the faceless masses?

I do not know.

Book Report/Criticism: King Leopold's Ghost

2009-08-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

The following is an assignment I had for a survey of African History until 1800 class I am currently taking. The assignment quite specifically stated that it was to be a book about African history BEFORE colonialisation, but, well .. my reasons are explained in the text.

[Publishing infoz:
August 7, 2009
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
1999
Mariner Books]

I would like first - and feel it entirely necessary - to explain my decision in choosing Adam Hochschild’s historical survey of the colonization of the Congo called “King Leopold’s Ghost.” Although the assignment requirements are quite clear in stating that the book must have been written concerning the pre-colonial history of Africa, I chose instead to read and work with a text that instead was about the colonization of Africa. This was not decided out of a sense of entitlement of not having to follow the rules, or out of a rebellious, anti-authoritative sense of doing whatever I like, but rather two very specific reasons - one of which is perhaps more valid than the other.

The first reason, and the lesser of the two, is because I had some trouble finding works concerning this period of African history. However, as I spent time looking for publications of pre-colonial Africa, my mind returned to a topic that I spent a great deal of time working with in the last year or so, and one that has been forever lodged in my mind as one of the great evils of human history: colonialisation itself. As an aside, I will forever find it bizarre that regardless of which word-processing software that I use, the word “colonialisation” - regardless of spelling - is flagged as being a non-word. So, moving along.

During the winter semester last year, I took the class that Mary-Jo Kietzman offered that was centered around Tariq Ali - both his fiction and non-fiction - and post-colonial criticism in general. In it, I found an entire breadth of concepts that I hadn’t explicitly encountered before, but nonetheless found to have made a great deal of sense. While the class often focused on fiction - indeed, the majority of book-length reading that was done was on the fictional novels of Ali and Orhan Pamuk - much of the auxiliary reading was on Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and Steven Harris’ “Postcolonial Criticism,” both of which deal more or less exclusively with the real-world implications and consequences of colonialism.

As stated, I am very drawn to this field of discourse. Additionally, I am a student motivated not by letter-grades but by the acquisition of knowledge and the development of understanding about the world. (I recognize that my using the word ‘acquisition’ here may be inappropriate in this context) Given this, I look towards projects and undertakings as means of learning in greater depth things which interest me and which I will find useful in my academic career. As a student of literature, narrative, discourse, dialogue and rhetoric, a solid understanding of the events leading up to and the consequences of colonialism are incredibly important. What I am particularly interested in are the compositional structures used by various authors in a variety of works, and how those structures affect the message that the author is trying to express. I also wanted to experiment, in a sense, with reading a piece of colonial history - written from the perspective of someone with an intense hatred for colonialism - as a piece of Orientalist literature/non-fiction. By which I mean, I wondered if Adam Hochschild was almost guilty of helping to enforce the problem that he hoped to shed light on.

On the Style of Writing Presented in “King Leopold’s Ghost”

Adam Hochschild is a writing professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and has written many books concerning the histories and perspectives of many peoples, so he is not without the proper credentials to write a book such as “King Leopold’s Ghost.” His style is engaging and thorough, providing for a highly-detailed yet easily-readable account of the development of the Congo. He often includes details about the personal lives of the figures he deals with an attempt to humanize them and shed light on their decisions. Unfortunately, this often means that he creates judgments of his own which are then forced on the reader - for better or worse, Hochschild makes little attempt at retaining a more journalistic, objective viewpoint.

This problem first manifests in his descriptions of one of the central players in the conquest of the Congo; the explorer, vagrant, brutal commander and evil-bastard-in-general, Henry Morton Stanley. He charts his life as first a young boy repeatedly rejected by those typically tasked with caring, and one that became a sensationalist, yellow journalist whom characterized the wars the United States had with the western plains Indians. However, he generally describes him in almost benevolent tones; the reader’s first introduction of him is one built on sympathy and a recognition of his intelligence and beautiful handwriting. Although he is later disparaged as being, in general, a terrible villain, Hochschild gives him more initial praise than the other central player of the book and development of the Congo, Leopold II.

Instead of the flowery, almost uplifting narrative that Hochschild provided for Stanley, Leopold II is generally described exclusively in negative terms. As a child, his fixation with numbers above all else and his cleverness - portrayed as a fox - is emphasized constantly, as is his social awkwardness. Although some of these attributes were also applied to Stanley, they were given to him in a benevolent fashion, reasoning that he had a difficult childhood and that his flaws should possibly be seen as charming distractions to the rugged exterior of the man he would become. Leopold II, however, was never illustrated in a positive manner; although Hochschild clearly and repeatedly acknowledges Leopold II’s incredible intellect and deft social maneuvering, his awkwardness at a younger stage of his life was instead used to paint him as a wretched boy, only barely worthy of the title that he would receive.

As an example, when writing about Leopold II’s moves to acquire stock in the Suez Trading Company and in efforts to acquire a colony all his own, Hochschild writes,
“Leopold’s letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone becomes embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary.” (p. 38)
While this might seem to be merely an author’s mental image and understanding of the reasons why a certain figure did a certain thing, the prose is nonetheless worded in a fashion intended to sway the opinion of the reader. Specifically, I am referring to his use of “badgering,” a word that, when used in this context, is never positive - indeed, it is always a negative connotation. Why Hochschild chose to use a word such as this - and others, as this is but one example of lexical issues that crop up repeatedly - is beyond my capacity to state with effectiveness. That said, it mostly just seems that he has a bias that he is unwilling to go to any lengths whatsoever to provide. I find this a strange stance to take as a professor working for a graduate school of journalism, a discipline that has built its foundation on objectivism.

His attempts at psychology feel, if anything, out of place. While Hochschild may very well have studied psychology while in university, may have even received a degree in it, his commentary revolving around it feels nonetheless to be that of an amateur. I find this almost entertaining given a line delivered in the Introduction of the book; “However, with my college lecture notes on [Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”] filled with scribbles about Freudian overtones, mythic echoes, and inward vision ...” It would seem that amateur psychoanalysis is something of a regular theme for Hochschild.

Which isn’t to say that his conjectures into the discipline aren’t entertaining; they are. They provide color to characters that I imagine would be traditionally painted in shades of grey, and make “King Leopold’s Ghost” a more entertaining work to read in general. I’m just not sure that they really add anything relevant to the dialogue, and I find the forcing of the author’s opinion on me during reading to be troublesome.

On the Question of Orientalism

One of the questions that I had after I had found this book was whether or not Hochschild himself was guilty of Orientalising the Congo - and I believe that the answer is more or less “yes.” It’s a difficult thing for any western-educated writer or intellectual to escape from, and great care must be taken to ensure its avoidance. Orientalism, coined by Edward Said in his book bearing the same name, is essentially the use of language to describe cultures and peoples of the Orient - essentially everything east of the eastern borders of Europe and south of the Mediterranean - in a way that permits the mental palatability of colonialisation. Examples of this from the figures in question are found throughout “King Leopold’s Ghost,” most often when Hochschild is quoting Leopold II or Stanley. Indeed, Said and Harris both actually quote speeches given by Leopold II when he was working towards his colonial prospect.

Leopold II essentially justified his colonial aspirations of the Congo as ones of altruism and benevolence, seeking to make the ‘uncivilized’ of the Congo into good, civilized Christians. An example, given at the first meeting of the organization that Leopold II built for the purposes of justifying his colonialism (initially mapping it), follows;
“To open to civilization the only part of our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which hangs over entire peoples, is, I dare say, a crusade of this century of progress.” (p. 44)
This sentence alone is rife with what were really quite clever language machinations; his use of the word ‘crusade,’ which was always an attempt at Westernizing the Muslim east, infers tones of righteousness and divine ordinance. To characterize not merely the people of the Congo but the entire region as having been engulfed in darkness - and to then suggest that white, European powers were the only beings capable of providing that light - was not only a brilliant piece of rhetoric, but an incredibly disgusting one, suggesting that the people of the Congo are utterly inferior of taking care of themselves.

Incidentally, even spelling the name of the country that would become, ironically named, The Free Congo State, as Congo is Orientalizing it - according to the text, even though the people of the Congo had no written language, the sound its inhabitants made when referring to it was much closer to a K than a C. However, it was Anglicized, and made into a word appearing more compatible with the English language in general.

Unfortunately, Hochschild sometimes also slips into these lexical traps. While he never refers to the Congo as being backwards or really even alien, an almost imperceptible flavor of The Other arises whenever he speaks of the region. That one of his only real sources of information about the region was a native of the area - and one removed from the time on conflict by several hundred years - is troubling. Even more troubling is it that this man - the leader of the Congo when the Portuguese first began exploring and enslaving the area - quickly converted to Christianity, and learned to read and write in highly fluent English.

Granted, I cannot imagine that there were a great many voices from the region during the time which could have spoken out; they were being enslaved under the veil of Leopold II’s fraternity and human-betterment. Hochschild does address this early on in his work; “There was no written language in the Congo when Europeans first arrived ... we have dozens of memoirs by the territory’s white officials ... Instead of African voices from this time there is largely silence.” (p. 5)

There is a hero to the story Hochschild presents, however, even though he may be a westerner that was genuinely trying to aid the people of the Congo. Edmund Dene Morel worked incredibly hard to expose the terrible evils which Leopold II’s Free Congo State regime inflicted on the people, and generated international attention enough to Leopold II’s ruse and deception that he had an enormous impact on its development. However, Hochschild returns again to a writing style that is clearly much more favorable to some figures than others. As an example,
“Morel was all of a piece: his thick handlebar mustache and tall, barrel-chested frame exuded forcefulness; his dark eyes blazed with indignation. The millions of words that would flow from his pain over the remainder of his life came in a handwriting that races across the page in cold, forward-slanting lines, flattened by speed, as if they had no time to spare in reaching their destination.” (p. 187)
Instead of the damning language used for an early Leopold II, or the understanding, almost paternal tone adopted when speaking about Stanley, Hochschild instead portrays Morel as something even more than a firebrand - he paints of him the very image of a justified revolutionary, correct in all actions and entire righteous in mind.

Conclusion

I contrast these concepts - of Orientalism, lexical slanting, Othering and so on - with those found in the two textbooks for class. As it would be far too easy to find quotes almost entirely neutral inside of either textbook, I will avoid doing so, as the intent of the texts and of “King Leopold’s Ghost” are clearly different and to do so would be unfair. What I found fascinating about the two texts was a style of characterization and description that I’d never really previously encountered when reading about Africa; they each write about the continent as if it is normal. Not normal to the standards of the west, not normal for the middle east, but normal unto itself simply because it is. While they each sometimes sound almost defensive of Africa (understandably, I think), they portray it in a light entirely alien to that found in Hochschild’s work. Although I think that each perspective is interesting, I believe that I will prefer returning to the text for information about the continent - even if Hochschild’s capacity to incite the reader, to make him feel something - anger, hate, hostility, anything - far eclipses that of the authors of the textbooks for class. Sometimes, I just want the information - sometimes, I want to be allowed to form my own opinions.

Fun With Grammar/The Trouble With King's English

2009-08-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

Quick preface: I posted this on my journal over at OK Cupid, and as I feel that it's a pretty important concept, I'm gonna repost it here because, well, it's my blog and I can do whatever I want with it.

Aside from phrases such as, “I don’t know what to put in these things/You can’t summarize a person in a single paragraph,” the most common message that I read in people’s profiles on Okay Cupid is something along the lines of, “If you can’t type/speak/conjugate/hyphenate/etc correctly, then do not message me.” I find this to be very troubling.

In linguistic surveys, people from across the country (the United States, anyway) typically identify people from the Midwest as speaking the most “correct” form of English. Specifically, those people from Michigan. I imagine that folks from the southwest, the UK, and other parts of the English-speaking world (sorry guys, that wasn’t my fault) would disagree with this. And hey, I’m from Michigan and pretty much disagree with this. Just the same, the perceptions of people determine what is correct and what is not.

That last sentence was important; what I mean by that is that degrees of ‘correctness’ change from region to region, and only due to mass-communication and quick-traveling methods can people as widely dispersed as those in the United States even have a conception, on a gigantically national basis, of what ‘correct’ on this level is. Just the same - as bizarre as it seems to me at times - we do. It is known as the King’s English.

The King’s English changes from region to region. It’s different in the UK, in Michigan (where I am from), in South Africa, in China. Note that ‘King’s English’ does not necessarily mean English itself, but rather the form of whatever predominant language of a region is that is spoken by the power base. The actual form of that power base does not matter; in America, that base is generally that of the government and the voice of media on a national scale. Generally, this refers to a specific dialect of a language rather than a specific language.

When people write or say things like, “I cannot tolerate people that cannot distinguish between ‘you are/you’re/your’ or refuse to use them correctly,” what they are really saying is that they are not willing to engage in discourse with people that refuse, for whatever reason, to conform with the language structures of the predominant power base. Ironically, I see this often in the profiles of people that claim they are unique, anti-conformist, original in every way possible, and entirely themselves - and damn what ‘the man’ tells them to do.

Often accompanying this is a bit of explanation; generally, these accuse people that fail to capitalize every proper noun and conjugate flawlessly as being lazy or stupid. In real-life, this is tantamount to racism; Ebonics, as a dialect, is every bit as complicated and nuanced as any of those found in the English language, and follows a similar structure of rules. This is why, although an individual removed from an Ebonics-speaking community may have tremendous difficulty understanding Ebonics, individuals from those communities have no trouble whatsoever understanding each other.

So why is that someone choosing to write in a more Internet-friendly fashion is immediately thought of as stupid, lazy, or unworthy? Although whether or not Internet-speak/leetspeak/etc is a dialect or not is difficult to determine and is a question for another essay, I believe it to still be important to consider. What’s to say that a person that uses “your” to replace “you are” (instead of “you’re,” for those of you keeping track at home) isn’t actually following a system of their or their communities’ own choosing that is every bit as rule-based as your flawless English?

This sort of discounts those individuals that genuinely do not know how to conjugate a verb and lumps them into the “more intelligent than you might like to think” category automatically, and that isn’t fair. It also is not what I am setting out to do. Just the same, I fail to see that people that are incapable, for whatever reason, of writing ‘correctly’ are inherently stupid. Is the failing of a school system the fault of the individual that had no choice but to attend? Is it somehow their fault that the raw lack of emphasis on grammar after middle school allowed them to slip through the cracks of high school without ever mastering the more nuanced bits of the language?

I don’t really think so. Sure, I prefer to read words written by people that can effectively produce King’s English; it’s easier on the eyes, mind and heart, but simply because they cannot doesn’t mean that they don’t have something valid to contribute to mine or your life, or that they couldn’t have a profound influence on us in some other way. John Milton, the guy that wrote Paradise Lost, dictated the entire thing to his daughters; someone that types five words per minute, has no understanding of conjugation or sentence structure, and couldn’t spell ‘cat’ with a dictionary could compose something on their own more effectively than Milton could.

And yet we revere Milton as a visionary.

Were he physically capable of composing the work on his own, could he have spelt everything correctly and kept the pacing/phrasing/grammatical structures found within the text the same? I don’t know. Is it important? Not in the least - because we have Paradise Lost and, honestly, that’s all that matters.

I guess that what I’m getting at is that the next time you receive a message or an IM or something from someone that writes, “Hey whats up” and fails to conjugate what+is correctly, don’t ignore them. Don’t discount them. Consider, at least, giving them a chance. Maybe they are stupid. Maybe they really are profoundly lazy. But hey - maybe just maybe, they’re a Ph.D candidate in particle physics that decided to dedicate more time understanding how existence functions as a whole rather than mastering the intricacies of composition.

Website!

2009-07-24T23:38:00.001-07:00

I began the process of building a website the other day. A blog, I guess - I decided that for what I was trying to do, Blogger and, to an extent, Wordpress - an excellent web dev. kit on its own - just wasn't enough. So I paid my room mate to use some of his service space, and registered the domain. The general layout and format is just about complete with a few more kinks to work out, but the first couple of articles are up.

It's about computer games and beer!

You can find it here:

40 Ounces, 1 Game

You should totally visit it and leave me some sweet comments!

Pretentious

2009-07-17T02:57:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a playwriting class right now. I'm enjoying it much more than I thought it would. To be honest, as much as I'm enjoying the actual writing process (even though it's entirely devoid of anything but a first draft ..), my favorite part are the theatre activities/games or whatever we play at the start of each class. For example, today we were told to imagine we were a political pundit, leader, or something that generates national news headlines, and we had to come up with an arbitrary point to present. Then, someone had to disagree with it. For example, I said that the only way to lower the crime rate in Flint is to force all of the poor people to move out. Troubling was it that several people thought I was being serious - but still, an entertaining game.

One of my classmates - a neighbor - asked me for a ride home today. He's an interesting person that I enjoy watching more than actually interacting with - mostly, because he likes to say and do things to generate attention/reaction, and I don't do terribly well in those sorts of encounters. I've always been curious as to what he actually thinks about certain topics - he's so driven towards eliciting an intense response that it's hard to get a handle on it. I imagine that's part of the purpose, whether conscious or un. Anyway, he's been a friend of sorts for awhile, although my relationship with him was initially provoked pretty much entirely as a way of ensuring I retained some connection to a girl I use to be in love with. This is no longer the case, although seeing her car in his driveway last weekend was kind of weird.

I tried to keep the conversation on the drive home - less than five minutes - lightweight, as I was tired and wanted to be at home, basking in the comforting glow of my enormous computer monitor and the joys of THE INTERNET. We talked mostly about random things, and at some point, I mentioned that my primary goal in life was to survive entirely from the written word, and that I didn't really care what format - for now - that that word happened to take. I then mentioned that, ideally, I'd be able to survive writing entirely about video games. This is where the conversation took a strange turn.

He then more or less accused me of wanting to produce irrelevant things that had no bearing on anybody. I agree with this - although I plan to stay active in academic circles, my heart and soul are in video games, regardless of whether or not it will have an impact on anybody's life. I also have absolutely no problem with this - I'll contribute, as I can, to the growth of both academic and social culture in my life, but hey: in the end, my happiness is all that ultimately matters. So long as my chosen lifestyle doesn't fuck up that of other people, then I see absolutely no failing. I responded with my usual response when anybody tells me something is irrelevant:

"Everything is irrelevant if you zoom out far enough."

Most people understand this to mean that, ultimately, I am a nihilist, and don't usually dig deeper into the concept - which is a shame, as I'd love to be challenged on that and have a good argument over it, but hey. My friend did not. Instead, he provided an entirely unexpected response: he called me pretentious.

"What do you mean, that makes me pretentious?"

"That's just a really pretentious thing to say, you know?"

First, lets look at the definition of "Pretentious": (thanks, dictionary.com)
1. full of pretense or pretension.
2. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
3. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.

I'm a pretty low-key kind of guy (it feels weird to refer to myself as any kind of guy ..) and generally acknowledge my own self-importance when it is demanded of me. I might be an asshole that doesn't like anybody, but I'm generally not the pretentious, academic/literary/etc-elitist sort, so this comment confused me. Isn't nihilism kind of the opposite of being pretentious? I kind of think so, but again - I'd love for someone to argue with me about this.

Why I am still thinking about this I am not sure. It wasn't meant as an insult, I think. My friend - and his .. well, his posse, often call things pretentious. As far as I can tell, their determination for calling something pretentious requires two things: that what you said might have been a good idea, and that they were probably incapable of it themselves. I used to get a kick out of hanging out with them, as they threw around the word 'pretentious' all the time - it felt like being called a weiner in second grade or something, as if they didn't really understand what the word meant.

I'm an English major. A lot of us are irritating, self-indulgent and pretentious fucks. But that's just the thing - he's a writer, an actor, a reasonable intelligent person. He's a grandiose sort when he's speaking, demanding attention in the same way Brad Pitt does (he sort of looks like him and speaks similarly) whenever he enters a scene. Yet I .. well, I don't think most people notice when I enter a room, and I get spoken overtop of rather frequently. I prefer things this way - I'd rather observe than interact. Yet what really confuses me is the irony of his calling me pretentious when it seems like almost every action he executes is designed to draw attention. Isn't that a bit self-important, as if he's saying, "Hey! Look at me! I'm about to do something REALLY SIGNIFICANT AND YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS IT OR ELSE, WELL, WHO KNOWS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN BUT I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE YOU."

That's kind of exaggeration, but only slightly. You'd be surprised.

I should probably mention that his group of friends loves to throw that word around - "Dude, you're pretentious for double-hitting that blunt" and "Quit being so pretentious, we don't want to read your story" are common enough sorts of lines to hear in his home. There's something kind of disturbing going on here (oh, I just found out: if you spell "disturbing" wrong, and right click on it to get the right spelling, the first choice that isn't the word "disturbing" is "masturbating." Awesome), mostly because I find that particular group of friends to be among the most arrogant and self-important of any that attend my school. There's a beautiful, wonderful irony in their designating everything but themselves as pretentious.

But hey, I guess if you zoom out far enough, pretty much everybody is pretentious.

Section 9 Sign

2009-07-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

I took a picture of this because I think it's pretty interesting. It's for that Section 9 movie that's coming out pretty soon, and I'm pretty excited for it. Just the same, this image - taken from over the bathroom at Showcase Cinemas West in Flint, Michigan - illustrates a potential issue I have with the film. Although it's really a question:

Will people more readily sympathize with something clearly and radically different than they are than with normal people?

The sign is pretty clearly a play on the segregationist history of the United States; white bathrooms, black bathrooms, etc. Are they actually trying to channel this question? I dunno. That the film, from the trailers, appears to have been shot somewhere in war-torn Africa, I find my question to be even more valid. My bet: people will get more riled up about violence against aliens, and find themselves more passionately inclined towards their cause, than they ever will about real-life genocide and the horrors occurring all over the world in the present-day.

I wish I didn't feel that way.

Multimedia message

2009-07-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Thomas verdict: GIVE US 2 MILLION DOLLARS YOU STOLE 24 SONGS

2009-06-19T16:28:00.001-07:00

Ah, well, the news is in: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars

I'm not surprised by this verdict in the least, and I'm not sure that anyone following the repeated legal saga of Jammie Thomas is, either. I am a little disturbed, though.

I can't help but wonder if this woman wasn't just martyred. Of course, the RIAA will never see the two million dollars that the jury awarded them today - she said as much herself - but it's not like a lower-middle-class mother could ever pay a sum like that. What disturbs me is the behavior of her lawyer. Kiwi Camara, the lead of her legal team, spent the last couple of weeks essentially showboating around his legal defense and the exotic concepts he planned to employ in court; unfortunately, it didn't seem to do a damn bit of good. Sure, he cross-examined the prosecution's witnesses, and even had newly-introduced evidence (the discovery of a log file detailing the replacement of the hard drive the files were on) thrown out of court. Yet .. he didn't call a single witness.

By no means am I legal expert, but .. really? They couldn't come up with a single person to explain how it's possible for a woman to have her online identity spoofed? Sure, the evidence against her was pretty thorough - they had her mac address tied to the Kazaa account, had her pretty much locked up with the tereastarr username, and made clear that she replaced her hard drive AFTER she was subpoenaed - but it's almost like her team was only barely trying.

Which is all the more disturbing considering the verdict: the jury hit her up for 80 grand/song, hundreds of times more than she was originally ordered to pay per infringement. Her first guilty verdict, which was thrown out due to faulty jury directions (more specifically, the judge felt that, in the end, "making available" did not equal "stealing and distributing," so he forced a retrial), stoked a good deal of grass-roots anger. And perhaps rightfully so - there was no way the single mother could have ever paid off her original debt. So if the 30 grand or so of her original verdict pissed people off .. what will 2 MILLION dollars do?

Hopefully, I'm being a crazy paranoid fuck here, but it really looks like this verdict was almost orchestrated on the behalf of the defense. Camara was a student of the figure that currently crests the copyfight movement in the United States, the law professor Lawrence Lessig. He's pretty well known at this point for what essentially amounts to zealotry, and his students have been accused as much as well. Right now, he's trying to get suits like this thrown out of court, arguing that file sharing is fair use. We're several decades away from that ever being passed into law, but .. isn't it interesting that this verdict so thoroughly paints the RIAA even more as villains, and people like Jammie Thomas even more the attacked and molested citizen?

I guess what I'm trying to say is .. I'm not sure anymore. I believe in the copyleft and destroying the concept of intellectual-property more than almost anything, but I'm chilled to think at what cost such liberties might be obtained. The idea here is freedom, flexibility, creativity and innovation - not bloody winning. If we have to kill off the people that need this movement to succeed the most, then we're no better than any other shitty political group and have defeated the point entirely. Come on, guys: we don't need martyrs. We need heroes.

Lists

2009-06-05T19:54:00.001-07:00

Personal use/record-keeping: list of publications submitted to and which bits were published.

1. Broadside:
Christmas Lights
Swordsong (published - issue 4)
Bad Habits
Never was a Gambling Man (published - issue 5)

Submitted 7/26:
I - Held
II - Elevation Level
III - Almost as if Alive
The Frontier
Spare Some Change, Man?
Grocery Shopping
The Other
[self-congratulatory note: my room mate Garrett, who knows and sees, as a result of his dating his girlfriend, the guy that handles all poetry for Broadside. He's a professor at my university. He told Garrett to tell me to not stop writing poetry because it was good. Go me.]

Submitted 10/6:
Pissgrid
Knives
Failing in Love
Stairwell
Ataxia
More in Dreaming

2. Prairie Margins:
Ataxia (published)

3. Sigma Tau Delta:
At What Cost? (published)
4:01am (published)

Poetry Grade Controversy omgomg

2009-04-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

So I've been having a grade dispute with one of my professors, and I thought I would chronicle it here. My efforts awarded me with an additional 2.5 points spread between two assignments, with the class having a total of 100 points. This may or may not make this a significant number, but as I said to my room mates, it isn't necessarily about being right, or even hitting that elusive 4.0 grade - it's about using my institution-taught capacity to think cleverly and argue against the institution. Full details below. Note also that this is mostly for posterity.

First - the assignment description (Light formatting was done inside of the quotes).

"These five exercises are akin to gardening: planting a seed in good
soil, watering it, weeding it, and allowing it to grow naturally. The
process combines summary, analysis and response but I’m not asking for
these pieces to be strictly “academic” – in other words, they can be
“informal” in the sense that I invite you to respond personally to the
ideas of each writer and to connect each essay to your own work and
the work of the class. You may find yourself extrapolating and
traveling outward on a tributary. That’s okay, as long as I can
follow your thinking. Here are some guidelines:

Aim for about 750 words on each one (two or three pages).
Begin with one central idea from the essay that grabs you or relates
to your own process or life as a writer. Resist the urge to summarize
only – any chump can do that. I want you to consider each author’s
ideas and filter it through your own understanding and experience. You
may find some biographical information about the author to be useful
and elucidating – a bit of background research could be pleasurable
and useful.
Nonetheless, include several direct quotes from the author and be sure
to attribute clearly and gracefully. Convince me you’ve actually read
the piece and convince me you understand it or at least wrestled with
its “controlling ideas,” theses or central contentions.
If you’re stumped as to how to develop the annotation, consider the
following questions: How does this essay connect to other things you
know about poetry? What charms you most about this author’s ideas?
What do you agree with? Why? What do you disagree with? Why? How
might you use these ideas in your own work? What confuses you about
this author’s ideas? What feels “new” to you (or for you) in this
essay? How does this essay connect with others we’ve read? How do
the ideas of the essay affect you emotionally? What have other people
said about this author’s ideas?

(See back for initial list of essays for consideration)

Initial list of essays for consideration: I’ll be offering these to
you as we move through the semester. Some are available online; some
in collections in my possession.

“Filthy Lucre” (Wiman)
“The Limit” (Wiman)
“An Idea of Order”(Wiman)
“Can Poetry Matter?” (Gioia)
“Art of Poetry”(Horace)
“On the Sublime” (Longinus) – worth double credit
“One Body: Some Notes on Form” (Hass)
“Writing the Reader’s Life” (Dobyns)
“An Interview with Paris Review” (Larkin)"

The two annotations that would lead to the grade dispute are as follows:

Annotation #3: Obama, Machiavelli, and the Prince

"A bit of forewarning: as I’ve spent the entirety of the last two weeks writing about purely academic, literary concepts, I’d really like to explore something a little bit more political. Due to this, I’ve chosen to write about a chapter found in Howard Zinn’s Passionate Declarations, which is a rather large book, and can really best be summed up as a damnation of U.S. foreign and internal policy, as well as something of an attack against the ideologies that prop it up. That isn’t to say it’s anti-American; rather, it’s pro-humanist, and against the various policies that the U.S. has enacted that has been against the bettering of humanity as a whole. It’s kind of difficult to describe it succinctly, and it also doesn’t help that I haven’t read it in its entirety for well over a year.

That said, I did read the chapter called ‘Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy.’ Early in the chapter, Zinn lays out a variety of theories and political concepts that Machiavelli, the 16th century Italian statesman/political theorist, laid out. Chief among them is the notion that the means justify the ends, provided that the ends are good unto themselves. This concept has been used repeatedly throughout history to justify all manner of atrocities, including but not limited to, the bombing of Cambodia whom, when we were bombing, we were, officially, at peace with, and of pretty much conquering the entirety of Latin America for economic gain.

Arguments are often made that the actions taken south of Mexico were to preserve national security and to fend off the communists, but Zinn argues, persuasively, otherwise; he says that these actions, such as the Bay of Pigs incident and, before the socialist uprising of Fidel Castro, the installment of the despot Batista in Cuba, that we enacted not to stop communism - specifically, Russian communism, which could not have realistically invaded the U.S. from socialist Cuba, or any other part of South America (he cites the inability of the Russians to win a war with Afghanistan - on their own border - as proof of this) - but, as stated, to secure the economic interests of the U.S. He quotes a U.S. senator (unnamed, unfortunately) who, when asked about the U.S. essentially going to war with Panama over access to its canal, said simply, “We stole it fair and square.”

Zinn moves forward to describe another concept critical to Machiavellian politics; that of the Fox and the Lion. The Fox, he says, must deceive both his enemy and his people; lacking the raw power necessary to subdue them by force, he must convince them that his ways are the best ways. The Lion, he says, must alternatively crush his enemies, sometimes because, simply, he can, but most often because they are aware of the deception enacted by enemies.

Zinn extends this concept further, and labels “Advisors” as critical elements of both Lion and Fox methodologies. He uses the example of Henry Kissinger as a primary Fox - he was primarily responsible for the bombings of Cambodia, and has been implicated in a great many atrocities committed in southern Asia. Most importantly, it was, again, Kissinger that was responsible - not the Prince that he played Advisor to. By permitting Advisors to be the great movers of potential evil, it shields the Prince - who must always attend to either the love or the domination of his people - from damages incurred by actions done by the Advisor. This is what gives rise to the term, “plausible deniability,” and has been used throughout American history to commit a great many evils.

At this point, I would like to move away somewhat from the text and delve into current matters of politics. As we are all aware at this point, Barack Obama has become President, ushering in - we hope, and were promised - an era of progressive change. I’m tempted to even capitalize change because it was such a massively Big Idea, but is change what the American people are receiving?

Last week, Obama appointed the fifth RIAA - the Recording Industry Association of America - to the Department of Justice, most notably the guy that took Tanya Anderson to trial for sharing a handful of mp3s online. I cannot find, at the moment, his name, but just the same, the RIAA has been responsible for a series of lawsuits against individuals for sharing a variety of music files online. Most often, these were cases involving college students, single mothers, and other normal people - these are not wealthy people, nor are they people attempting to attain wealth by distributing music online. The RIAA sued them, in some cases - Tanya Anderson’s included - for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Somehow, these corporations felt that this was fair.

By appointing these RIAA lawyers to the DoJ, Obama has not demonstrated the Change that he was elected to produce - rather, it appears that he is pandering instead to the major businesses of our nation. This somewhat digresses from the Machiavellian concepts laid out earlier, and indeed, will be dissimilar for now - but what stance will Obama himself take when these lawyers begin using their cruel and evil tactics on people that deserve nowhere near as harsh of a treatment as they will receive? I imagine, he will say, that he has plausible deniability - that the DoJ lawyers were individually responsible, and not him. I seem to recall DoJ Chief Gonzales using this exact argument when allegations were brought against him. This is not the Change that I voted for.

Further damning, the Obama administration has invoked the ‘State Secret’ privelage multiple times since coming to office, most recently to protect both the federal government and the telecom companies from being sued by the American people for violating their Constitutional rights to privacy. The particularly painful part is that Obama himself, both before and during his Presidential bid, fought against exactly this kind of treatment of the American people. Again, this is not the Change that we voted for - rather, this is a continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies that have all but damned our nation in the eyes of the world. The following quote comes from a Salon.com article that I found interesting, although possibly uncited, asking exactly the same question I have posited;
“Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies' obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?
In a word, yes.”1

So, at the least, it’s not just me that’s upset by this. I remember, before the actual election and during the campaign, speaking with some friends about this; “Man, if he fucks this up, then our entire generation will be as jaded as Kennedy’s after they shot him.” I’m beginning to fear that this is happening, and quite faster than anyone could have anticipated - although Obama has made many conciliatory moves on the international front, he remains positively damned on the home front. My fear in this is that he will continue hiding behind the Bush secrecy doctrine - why is this a fear? Because there can be no great Advisor, in the Machiavellian sense, than a policy that is utterly immune to prosecution."

Professor's response:

Grade: 1/5

Daniel, your writing is smart and lively but it's not about poetry. These annotations are supposed to be about poetry. No matter how well you wrote them, you missed the point of the assignment.

Annotation #5 - On the Obfuscation of Language

"Essay source: Language Myths. Ed. Laurie, Peter Trudgill. Penguin Books, London, 1998.

Depending on the order that you read this and the short essay composed for the final portfolio, you may be aware that one of my underlying goals in all of my education is the an understanding of words; not merely meanings, or how they interrelate with one another, but how they impact and influence people. An important aspect of this is whether or not people view not only words, but also the changing of words, as being particularly valid/correct. This concept is hit upon in a pair of essays found in Language Myths, a book that I forgot that I owned until looking around for something to write on for this annotation. Almost appropriately, the essays I will be focusing on - The Meaning of Words Should not be Allowed to Change, by Peter Trudgill, and America is Ruining the English Language, by John Algeo, are found, respectively, as the first and last essays in the book.

The first essay examines a variety of words that have changed over the last, oh, five hundred years - which, really, includes just about all of them. Trudgill attacks the notion that there is really a wrong way to use a word, and asserts that, so long as meaning and intent are clear, that it doesn’t particularly matter if they’re being used correctly. Indeed, he sums up his thesis towards the latter portion of the essay; “When is misuse not misuse? When everybody does it.” (Trudgill p. 7), and further, he states that “The fact is that none of us can unilaterally decide what a word means.” (Trudgill p. 7)

He uses a variety of words and phrases to demonstrate that, so long as intent and meaning are clear, that misuse isn’t terribly relevant - although he doesn’t state as much, he essentially views this as the further potential evolution of the English language. Among others, he explores usage of the words “uninterested” and “disinterested,” and explains how people use these words often interchangeably even though they have different meanings, and a little bit of how this may have occured; “They have, perhaps, heard the word disinterested and, not being aware of the meaning ‘neutral, unbiased’, they have started using it as the negative form of interested in the more recent sense.” (Trudgill p. 3) I found the essay pretty convincing although, to be fair, I already agreed with his standpoint.

The second essay, America is Ruining the English Language, explores the idea made clear in the title. He says that it isn’t, and his argument stems almost entirely from the following quotation: “Present-day British is no closer to that earlier form than present-day American is.” (Algeo p. 179) Even if it was a bastardized version, it wouldn’t really matter; “It is, in the great Anglo-American tradition, our God-given right to have our own opinions and to take it or leave it when it comes to style in couture, diet, entertainment, religion and language.” (Algro p. 178) What he is basically saying here - and, indeed, alludes to later in agreeance with Trudgill, is that language means whatever we, the users and creators of it, want it to mean and in general agree that it means. To quote again Trudgill; “Words do not mean what we as individuals might wish them to mean, but what speakers of the language in general want them to mean.” (Trudgill p. 8)

I accept both of these arguments as essentially a tacit endorsement of the abuses I so thoroughly enjoy inflicting on the English language. One of the concepts that has arisen from two writers in my Composition Theory class is that of the writer, student or author developing his or her own truth and, so long as the meaning is made clear to the reader, then that truth may stand pretty much as given. Of course, this becomes a little bit more complicated in poetry - one of the struggles that I’ve encountered is that just because I want something to mean something, doesn’t mean that you, or anyone else, will get that meaning from it. It’s something that I’m trying to work with, but my insistence on obfuscating things probably doesn’t help.

So, a set of procedural goals: to develop an archaic, complicated, and vague style that is somewhat-easily understood by my audience, and therefore valid. The trouble: the understood level of intelligence of my readers, and hoping that it’s relatively high so I can be abstract, and hope they’ll be willing to dig the thing apart to extract some sort of hidden meaning. A boy can dream."

Professor's response:

Grade: 2.5/5

"At least here you got around to poetry in the last two paragraphs, but again, this isn't really what I wanted you to do with the annotations. See comments on #3. I wish you'd have checked with me about these alternate articles."

Later that evening, I sent my professor the following request:

"Okay, moving along. I had some concerns with the scores that I received for my annotations - as they were already late, I understand if neither of the following are opportunities for me, but nonetheless I would like them to be considered. Here are what I hope my options are: A) the most straightforward, in which you allow me to rewrite, at least the annotation that was scored at 1/5, for even partial credit, or B) you allow me to present an argument for why both annotations should be scored higher - I have a series in mind that I believe are fairly compelling.

Thanks again,

Daniel A. Russ"

and her response, which came early the next morning:

"Obviously you were closer on the second one, as I indicated on the comments. But I had provided essays I wanted you to consider that touched on issues relevant to our class; if you selected others, you should have consulted with me first. As noted, your comments were smart and literate but not on the topics I wanted you to consider: at the least, you needed to make the links to the themes of the class clearer. This was an advanced poetry writing class -- I wanted you to consider issues of craft and to use poems/poetry as the substance of your discussions. I'm sure if you'd selected essays more pertinent to writing poetry, you'd have been equally articulate and received an appropiately higher score. My decision stands."

I don't really deal well with language like this from a professor of, of all things, English and poetry, so I sent her the following:

"I guess that the primary problem that I have with those grades is that nowhere in the assignment description does it say that I /have/ to use the provided essays - it merely says that the “[following list are an] initial list of essays for your consideration.” Further, one of the annotations that I received a 4.5/5 on - “Wiman on Milton in Guatemala” - wasn’t on the list.
Your second problem with the essays, that each essay was to be about poetry whereas mine were not, is also somewhat troublesome for me - nowhere in the assignment description was the rule, “This must be about poetry” laid out. Following, I’ll lay out what the requirements - quoted from the sheet say:
+“The process combines summary, analysis and response”
+“Aim for about 750 words on each one (two or three pages).”
+“Begin with one central idea from the essay that grabs you or relates to your own process or life as a writer.”
+“I want you to consider each author’s ideas and filter it through your own understanding and experience.”
+“ Convince me you’ve actually read the piece and convince me you understand it or at least wrestled with
its “controlling ideas,” theses or central contentions.”

The only actual mention of “poetry” made for the assignment guidelines are found in the “If you’re stumped, use these for potential thesis’” section - all of the rest, that fall in the ‘required’ section of assignment document, relate to “your process and life as a writer.” To return to my Wiman piece, only brief mention is made of poetry - it was much more about philosophy, theology, and EXPERIENCE than it was about the craft.

Finally - without actually arguing anything about a specific piece of writing - I’ve spent the vast majority of the semester breaking rules. My Lewis Carol Carol is an excellent example of that - I didn’t even read the assignment, but received a nearly perfect score on that unit of poems. You called it, among other things, a fun linguistic exercise - similar to how you called the pieces provided for Annotations 3 and 5 ‘smart and lively’. I really can’t help but feel like I’m being punished for thinking and acting slightly outside of the box, to use the cliche - more things relate to “my process and life as a writer” than just poetry - and although I’ve come to love poetry, I’m more than that, and felt that I should approach my final annotations with ‘getting better at something I don’t have experience doing’ than repeating assignments that I’d already completed and could have written with my hands tied behind my back.

While I can accept that, thematically, each annotation should have been about poetry - even thought it was never clearly stated as such - I have a hard time believing that Annotation 3 is really worth only 1/5. It followed each of the other directions that were laid out in the assignment document, and I .. lack the words to explain how I feel about a single, unstated ‘requirement’ being worth literally 80% of a grade.

Concerning the actual assignment rules, that’s about all I have - as I said, this doesn’t include any arguments specific to the annotations themselves. I have several in mind for each, and why they are both critical, in a sense, to not merely the arts themselves, but specifically to poetry."

A few hours later, I received both a grade adjustment and the following pair of messages, sent within moments of each other with no response from myself in the meantime:

New score for Annotation 3: 2.5/5
New score for Annotation 5: 3.5/5

"Because of your precocious and persistent arguments, I've slightly adjusted your scores. Don't push me further. It was a poetry class; you wrung about as much out of working outside the box as you should reasonably expect. Be grateful.

...

P.S. Rereading the assignment description myself, I see that I wrote "I invite you to respond personally to the ideas of each writer and to connect each essay to your own work and the work of the class." It's that last phrase that suggests where your last two annotations did not satisfy. Do I really need to hammer this further?"

_______________________________________________________________________

Which I guess is something of a victory.

The Combat of the Essay

2009-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

Essay I wrote regarding my final thoughts, for the class, on the composition process. It's mostly about dragons.

Last time, I said that the first step in an examination of my writing process was to have a readable copy of
the assignment on-hand. Although I still think that this is mostly
true and important to have on-hand, it won’t be true for much longer –
someday, I’ll have graduated college, and will have to establish some
sort of writing habits that are independent of assignments from
professors. This is fine, as I’ve developed a new sort of process
and, to steal the title from a researchable technology in a game I’ve
been enamored with recently (an old PC game called Alpha Centauri that
is really one of the most intelligent games I’ve ever played – and
I’ve played a great many intelligent games), and I’d like to call it the same thing: Doctrine:Flexibility.

In the confines of the game, the technology allows you to begin
developing military units that are based around speed, agility, and
flexibility. It is required in order to build any sort of naval, air,
or ground unit that is inside of a vehicle. Although it’s required
for the tank-type platforms too, I believe that this is outside of the
scope of what I’m trying to say and thus will not attend to it. The
technology, when you discover it, is accompanied by a quote from Sun
Tzu about being able to immediately adapt to any sort of changing
situation. It’s also about not merely being able to adapt, but
understand exactly what it is your adapting to – and how best to
combat it.

I like to consider writing as a form of combat because I am a gigantic
nerd. If you would but bear with me, I can explain some of the
similarities, and how they apply to my own process. The first
component of the writing battle process is two-fold, and can be boiled
down to a single word: preparation. This is the single most important
aspect of my writing process – before writing, I must have an idea of
what I will be trying to say. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a
formalized thesis statement, but the concept – and my readings for it
– must have congealed sufficiently so that there is, at the least, an
image of the monster that I have to kill. If I don’t know what the
monster even looks like – let alone its weakness (almost always the
belly) – then how am I to slay it? Secondary, if only in concept but
not importance to this, is the proper armament. I’ve always liked the
adage/cliché of not taking a knife to a gun fight, and this applies
well to this concept – if I’m going to be writing, for example, about
dystopic narratives present in early Norwegian black metal, then
listening to a bunch of rap music and reading about feminist theory in
the confines of Victorian Literature simply isn’t going to do me any
good – this would be the knife. And really, why even bother with a
knife? The goal is to win, not match weapons – always take the gun
with you, even if you know it’s a knife fight - perhaps, especially when you know its a knife fight. Point being, always
have research and information relevant to exactly what you’re trying
to say, as these are the only weapons you get.

This arose for me personally even in the last day. I decided to try
and make the argument that postcolonial literature is inherently
dystopic in nature, and that the two forms of literature share a great
deal in common. Dystopic narratives and postcolonial concepts are
both quite nuanced and complex ideas, and more work than merely
reading the novels must be applied (it didn’t help that journal-based
research was required). Strangely, I found that the best piece of
research for aiding me in defining dystopic narrative wasn’t so much
concerned with literature as it was with music – the piece was
actually about how industrial music and Dadaist art are incredibly
similar, and it merely used dystopic narratives as a bridge between
the two. This was probably not the sort of research that I’d have
expected to use and lean heavily on in my work, yet it was – it turned
out to be a gigantic gun. The research that was recommended by the
professor, which focused on Orientalism and then on postcolonial
literature, turned out to be the knives mentioned – although they made
for great supporting arguments, I found that they were almost too
abstract to employ as primary arguments.

Had I approached this assignment without an understanding of what I
wanted to accomplish, then I wouldn’t be writing this now – I’d be a
charred cinder of a man sitting, kind of, in my shabby, typical university-student living room. My
research would have revolved around postcolonial concepts, and not
dystopian ones – and as said, you should never bring a knife to a gun
fight. Although this speaks to the weapons that should be brought to
fight writing-dragons, it doesn’t speak to their weak spot.

This spot is different for every dragon and every battle. This is, of
course, a metaphor for how you go about making your argument, and
requires a heavy volume of pre-writing for me personally, in addition to
free-writing and generalized note-taking. I look at this as being
sort of like spending hours with dusty tomes about the dragon I’m
planning to fight. In the context of the paper mentioned above, I
discovered – or, as has to be the case with things I’ve not done
before, decided – that this hinged on how well I defined dystopian
narrative. I’m not going to write this out here – I’ve done this
twice in two papers in the last week and am really, honestly, hugely
tired of it – but by defining dystopian narrative in the way that I
meant to apply it, it enabled me to take three to five fundamental
concepts of it, and apply those individually to postcolonial and
Orientalist literature. For those keeping score at home, I was
writing specifically about William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Orhan Pamuk’s
Snow (one of the most profoundly sad books I’ve read in a long time),
and Tariq Ali’s Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree. By breaking down
dystopian narrative as I did, it enabled me to make arguments about
each of the three novels independent of one another, and, I would argue, more effectively that I could have otherwise.

I pictured this kind of like setting a series of anti-dragon traps;
one made with fire, in case he had frosty skin; one made of ice, in
case he had flaming scales; and one made of lightning, in case he had
watery eyes like a sappy bitch. I also selected a corresponding
weapon, in case the dragon got caught in any single one of the traps
and could thus be dispatched accordingly, and also a shotgun in case
he didn’t fall into any of them. Hey, this is my process, and I get
to make the rules: never bring a knife to a gun fight. It’s kind of like what Bruce Campbell said in one of the Evil Dead movies: “Good, bad .. I’m the guy with the gun.”

Of course, sometimes, no matter your level of preparation, you fail to
anticipate some attribute of the dragon: maybe he can burrow
underground. Maybe he can spit giant spears, or maybe he has enslaved
a village and is holding is hostage – you didn’t even know that he
could do that! The tomes don’t mention these kinds of things sometimes. So too is it with
making literary arguments – sometimes, you run into problems that you
couldn’t have anticipated. Sometimes, no matter how hard one tries,
arguments just can’t quite fit. This again returns us to Doctrine:
Flexibility.

In this situation, the Doctrine requires that definitions and
arguments be made of liquid and not stone – they must not be rigid,
because sometimes, the arguments, as they have been laid out, just
don’t work with what you’re trying to say. Being persuasive is almost
always more important than being true to the argument, and sometimes,
this means arguing against fundamentally-held conceptions about the
idea you’re trying to manipulate. For example, when asked about what
dystopian narrative is, or to mention a few dystopian narratives
they’ve encountered, they would say: it’s a story about the future
with a super-shitty fascist or libertarian government, like in 1984 or
Brave New World. The Tariq Ali novel mentioned – Shadows of the
Pomegranate Tree ¬– takes places in al-Andalus and what is now known
as Granada during the time of Isabella and Ferdinand. I think this
was sometime in the fifteenth century – just after the Muslim golden
age, and certainly before the European one. So, how in the world can
a Christian, royal government removed five hundred years be considered
dystopic? By the rigorous and clever employment of Doctine:
Flexibility.

Finally: to get to the theory components of my process. I’m
reasonably sure I’m exactly the sort of Neil Gaiman is, although I’d
like to think that I have a higher capacity for academic sort-of
stuff, if only because I’m in college, will be in college, and will
probably stay in college for my whole life. Due to this, I kind of
have to have some capacity for academic writing – although I love
poetry, I love more analyzing the shit out of it and holding it up to
the standards of the modern, academic world than anything else. Elitism is thy name.
Moving on: I made the argument in class that Neil Gaiman is a process
and New Rhetorician writer, and as I said, I find that I am both of these
things. The former component should be somewhat clear by what was
stated about dragons, machine guns and speed boats, and also knives.
What I particularly like about the New Rhetorician model is this
capacity of creating truth from language – it acknowledges that truth
is a malleable, subjective thing, and that it is my responsibility –
and right – to create it and employ it where and how I see fit.

What is strange to me is how little any of the above applies to my
poetry. In the last year, I’ve begun to take the craft more
seriously, and am finding that I only kind-of sort-of have a real
methodology for doing so. Generally speaking, when I sit down to
write a poem, I have a very specific phrase or idea in mind. Take,
for example, a poem that I recently had published in Prairie Margins;
it’s called Ataxia and is a pantoum, which is a cyclic sort of poem
that I find both irritating and engrossing – I’m big on formal forms,
for some inexplicable reason. One evening, while returning home after
drinking with some friends, my car got stuck in my driveway because
apparently East Village has too many poor people in it to actually get
plowed in a reasonable amount of time. Anyway, in the process of
digging it out and kicking my car, the idea of snow .. “clinging to
life like in a nuclear winter” came to mind. This phrase swam around
my mind for several weeks, and eventually lead to Ataxia – the poem
itself came out bizarrely different than I’d expected it to, but then,
they all do. Which is why I don’t really get how it happens. I’ve
come to find, however, that the real craftsmanship in poetry has
nothing to do with the first draft, but comes rather in the editing
and re-writing of it. “How can this be more clear or archaic? How
can I modify this line to fit my syllable count (almost always ten or
fourteen) and to sound, well, awesome?” In this, my poetry arises
through process writing.

I’m not quite sure that the New Rhetorician model applies to this – my
goal with poetry is never truth; indeed, on the first day of class,
the professor asked us what our goal with the form was. Several
people alluded to establishing a sort of truth, an accuracy, an
honesty and purity of thought, emotion and form – my response was to
cloud reality and to confuse the hell out of people. This still holds
true, even after formalizing my process and the craft – I don’t want
people to know my truths. They can get their own – because, when I
write poetry, I am not the noble knight slaying the dragon, and I’m
not the guy bringing a gun to a knife fight.

I am the dragon, and I’m going to kill you.

Composition Theory Essays + Gendered Books Idea Stuff

2009-04-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Putting these here for posterity - they don't have much context in them regarding source material, so they may not make sense to anybody but me.

1.
Initially, I found myself at odds with Bruffee's essay Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind,” but I found myself agreeing with the majority of the content of his essay by it's conclusion.

Inclined to disagree that collaborative writing/learning from the outset, I hadn't considered that writing is essentially the same thing, although it takes place specifically inside of one's mind. My personal experience with collaborative learning has generally been poor, mostly due to the reasons that Bruffee laid out; “ethnocentrism, inexperience, personal anxiety, economic interests, and paradigmatic inflexibility.” I found the final reason to be perhaps the most significant; often, the standards that I set for myself academically are different than those of the people that I've been assigned to work with, and this can often dramatically affect the productivity of the group. If I'm driven to meet all requirements and surpass them while following all of the rules closely, but my partner either doesn't care or would rather skirt the edges of the rules, then the difference in vision can be damaging.

I particularly appreciated his point regarding explanatory or argumentative conversations: they're almost identical to those conversations when they're written. Instead of an active voice disagreeing with your thesis and a variety of points, you instead have an internalized version, capable of dissecting your arguments with a cold and callous effectiveness, and when you're writing to explain something (which, I believe, is a form of argumentation in itself), you're speaking directly to the internal voice that doesn't know the first thing about assembling a Warhammer 40K army (or whatever your topic might be).

I found Bruffee's statement concerning the best methods to learn to think better to be interesting; “the first steps to learning to think better, therefore, are learning to converse better and learning to establish and maintain the sorts of social context, the sorts of community life, that foster the sorts of conversation members of the community value.” It strikes me that he's suggesting that by engaging in peers or superiors in active, intelligent dialogue, then you're creating a more powerful and intelligent internalized voice – which aids directly both in writing and thinking, as with a more effective challenging voice, then you are forced to deliver more effective thought in order to combat it.

That conversations “of value” need to occur is a topic that came up among my room mates last night. One of the two sat with one of the sociology professors for four hours, drinking coffee and talking about local, global, and school issues, and the topics ranged from curriculum discussion to community organization. Among the things that my room mate took from the conversation were that these dialogues need to occur with more regularity, and I entirely agree – my room mate, as a direct result of the conversation, was smarter, more well-informed, and had developed a series of new ideas which he could use in the future for various social and academic pursuits. One of the most rewarding conversations that I've had personally was with a former professor over a series of beers in a local bar. The conversation often drifted into territory covered during the class, but due to the more intimate nature of the setting, far greater levels of depth were achieved – although I learned a great deal from the class itself, I developed a series of entirely new insights concerning the course material that I'm not sure I'd have achieved otherwise. It wasn't exclusively self-beneficial – after asking my opinion on a series of curricular ideas for future classes, I believe my professor came away from the discussion with a somewhat better idea of what worked inside of the classroom, and what did not.

I'd like to think my ideas were worthwhile in curricular terms, anyway.

One of the other aspects that this viewpoint skirts around is that of the voice of the writer, or even the speaker. By imagining and being aware that every written work is a dialogue, the result of an internal conversation, it enables the writer to speak with a much more clear voice of their own. When trying to speak to merely a blank page and a letter grade, prose often is written without character and reflection; however, by actively defending your arguments and acknowledging that there could potentially be some harsh critics – even among your peers! - the voice of the individual is much more likely to come through.

2.

The two reading selections for today elaborate on themes that have occurred repeatedly throughout the month’s-worth of readings; that there is a sizeable population of students at the college level that seem to be, for whatever reason, incapable of writing. The majority of these seem to focus on the mechanics of the language, and whether or not the direct instruction of these will better the writing quality of students. I find myself in league with the anti-grammarians, although I think the issue is almost an aside; the essays tend to focus on the craft of writing instead of the purpose, and I find this to be one of the greater failings of the system.
Many students struggle with mathematics due to its high level of abstraction; that is to say, they are taught a series of mechanical methods of evaluating sets of problems to achieve, what often seems to be, an arbitrary goal. 1 + x = 5. Anyone that has taken rudimentary algebra would immediately recognize X as being 4; but what does 4 mean? For that matter, what does X mean? Without a tangible understanding of the purpose of solving the problem (beyond avoiding a check mark), it remains so abstract that to focus on the resolution of the problem and its implications becomes pointless.
By teaching an understanding of the purpose of the problem – such as determining the depth of an angle using trigonometry that will be used to build a fin on a rocket ship – it becomes more clear to students why accuracy is important. It also demonstrates that there is a real purpose beyond a letter grade to the problem.
So too is it with writing; by instructing the core fundamentals of the language and composition, they develop in students a mechanical set of methods by which to deal with problems - introductory paragraph, thesis sentence or phrase, three supporting paragraphs and a conclusion – but fail to elaborate on the function of this form. Most reasonably accomplished or educated writers would argue that the purpose of forms such as the above are to allow for clarity and ease of understanding for the reader, as well as a simplified model of organization for the composer. But would what Rose calls remedial writers be able to explain this? State the function of effective communication via the written word?
“[Freshman composition] became and remained the most consistently required course in the American curriculum.” Why is this? Even though the readings have almost all hinted that the quality of the American student’s writing has dropped in recent decades, we continue to follow the same course. Although my experience, being anecdotal, isn’t worth terribly much, I know that it worked for me – and many of my peers.
Until my junior year of college, I was incapable of identifying a verb, or a noun, or any number of other specific functions of the language. I struggled in an introductory linguistics class to be able to identify a subject, pronoun, and so on – even though I’ve been fully capable of writing a reasonably well-written essay throughout much of my academic life. I believe the cause of this is due to an immense exposure to written works, whether in the form of literature, essay, poetry, or online prose. Through a drive to want to be able to communicate ideas as effectively as some of my favorite authors, I paid close attention to their stylistic choices – specifically issues of phrasing, pacing, and tone – and came to emulate many of what I considered the more effective practices. Further reading further developed the internalized craft.
It strikes me then that an effective method of instructing effective composition rests on providing students with effective examples of composition. Although literature classes often force students to read a great deal of text, they are often chosen for a series of reasons that will not contribute directly to the learning of a student. Themes, antiquated morality, excellent character development – these are the sorts of things that are focused on in a literature course. Often, these works are classical in nature - that is, their writing style is from an era preceding our own in a significant fashion – would seem to be more detrimental to the development of composition than anything else. Although they may develop skills that enable them to analyze characters and plot elements – important in their own right – they display to the student a style which is no longer desireable. Unfortunately, these would often seem to be the only concrete examples of composition received by students (at least before entering University).
Teaching instead works that are renowned for their style, clarity, and high-level of communication of critical ideas might be a better choice. This would enable students to see what the powers of effective writing can be. A lesson plan could proceed similar to the following; 1. An essay is presented, and the instructor asks the students to discuss the major ideas, and whether or not they work, in class and around their peers. 2. After establishing a relative uniformity of interpretation, the instructor could ask /why/ the students received the messages that they did – and finally, 3., the instructor could explain what about the essay – stylistically and mechanically – allowed the class to understand the ideas presented therein as accurately as they did. These broad ideas could then be used in further assignments for the classroom, with an emphasis on clarity of deployment of ideas.

3.

I found that I reacted more strongly to today’s first reading – “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing” – than I have to any of the other assigned readings, and it’s little wonder. As a piece focusing on essentially politicizing the classroom and the politics themselves, it’s difficult not to have an immediate knee-jerk reaction regardless of political orientation. My reaction, specifically, was a tacit agreement with the author – that the political ideologies of the instructor should have little to do with the curriculum and discussion in the classroom.

My issue with using freshman composition as a political platform lies in similar language to the second piece as well, “Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone,” in that students at that level typically lack both the political knowledge and rhetorical skills to compete with an instructor that they may disagree with. Although this may provide an opportunity for an instructor to indoctrinate students into what they perceive to be the correct political worldview, they are abusing what is already an inherently unfair situation. Students pay thousands of dollars to learn the skills and abilities necessary to compete in the outside workforce, not to become pawns in a leftist agenda.

That said, I find myself somewhat at odds with this interpretation as well; my view on the relative sanctity of education contrasts with my own political agenda. I believe that I would support, ideologically, the majority of instructors pushing a leftist agenda, and a very real part of me wants professionals at this level to use the opportunity to convert more people to this view – thus increasing votes, population, and ideas present to the left of the spectrum. But again, the classroom – especially the freshman composition classroom – is not the place for this sort of indoctrination. Nowhere on a college campus should students be indoctrinated into a particular mode of thought, regardless of the well-meaning of their preachers. Arguments for the purity of education aside, allowing this sort of behavior will potentially allow for more right-wing and views contradictory to my own to proliferate in schools where alternate ideas are held.

That is not to say that the freshman composition class shouldn’t be a forum for ideological disagreements. Each student will have a different background, and many will likely hold contradictory views. Rather than focus on badgering right-wing students into submission with vastly-advanced skills and understanding of the issues, instructors should rather provide for a forum in which these ideas can be discussed – but in writing. The traditional model of composition at this level, which generally includes at least one argumentative essay, is the perfect place for this sort of rhetoric.

Something that I have never seen done but might provide for an interesting and beneficial assignment would be to allow for two (or potentially more) students with differing political ideologies to write argumentative essays in direct opposition with one another. The students, before the formalized, five-paragraph-essay is written would need to agree on a series of generalized points to cover in the course of their respective essays. The topic, chosen preferably by the students themselves, would then be broken down into a series of points of contention – three or more of these could be chosen, and would become the individual topics for body paragraphs.
For example, were the students to choose abortion as a generalized topic, then the points of contention could read something like; “The point at which life begins (and therefore the point in which abortion is acceptable to all parties(unless of course they’re a genuine fundamentalist and believe that no child should be aborted, even in cases of the death of the mother or rape, in which case they should probably be taken out back and shot)),” “the social and economic ramifications of fully-legalized abortion,” and “alternatives to abortion.” These topics are of course entirely flexible and would change from student to student, but I believe they illustrate my point.

Trouble may arise if the majority of a classroom subscribe to the same general ideology, but this will provide an opportunity to further develop the rhetorical skills of the student – specifically, in how to, with words, bitch-slap the hell out of someone you agree with for making poor arguments.

What I’ve found to be one of the best opportunities for growth in this field, personally, are taking a stand contradictory to my personal beliefs in a topic. I recently completed an Argumentation and Debate course, and very early in the semester the instructor split the classroom into a series of groups. Each of these groups then decided on a specific topic, and then the groups were divided in half again so that there would be clearly-defined teams on each side of the debate. The topic of my group was international electronic piracy (which tended to gravitate most often towards the most popular form of this, music piracy), and even though I am a self-avowed copy-fighter and believe in few causes more passionately than Creative Commons Licensing, I chose to argue on behalf of the developers of intellectual property. Although I was in opposition to the majority of the words I wrote for the debate, I learned more about structuring an argument and about the field than I believe that I would have done had I chosen to support my own beliefs. I believe also that encouraging students to argue for things that they do not agree with will provide an excellent opportunity to hone those skills – for it’s far easier to see the holes in your argument if you already have an established opinion contrary to what you’re saying, as you personally will be your most staunch enemy.

WoW Response:

Alright. I’m actually more interested in exploring, in a slightly more formal fashion, one of the concepts that has arisen as a result of the mini-seminar that was presented by Jonathan and I; specifically, I am referring to the concept of books having a gender.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last week, indeed, almost every moment that I’ve been free from the tyranny of term papers. Alright, not every moment - I completed my last major term paper last evening (17 pages!), and bought myself two bottles of expensive beer as a reward and spent the remainder of the evening watching anime on Adult Swim. Just the same though, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Specifically, and perhaps most critically if I am to proceed with this as an independent research endeavor, about how, exactly, one would define a book as masculine or feminine, or if, as I asked my girlfriend the other night, if this wasn’t a potentially dangerous avenue to even explore. My room mate, whom I respect immensely, is a sociologist-in-training. He’s a pretty clever guy, and has been studying gender/feminism a great deal in the last few months, so, as usual, he’s a pretty good resource to try and tap.

His initial reaction was that all books (I’m speaking specifically of novels in this context) have a gender, which can be relatively easily determined. He had a few ideas, but first, an examination of how he would define a book as masculine or feminine. His first criteria is the characters - are they predominantly, according to the BEM Sex Role Inventory, or some other metric, feminine or masculine? Their actual sex may or may not be important. Are their actions identifiably, in the Western context, feminine or masculine? And so on - but I, as I told him, find this viewpoint troublesome. It completely ignores two critical components of any novel; the plot, and the theme that arises as a result of both the characters and the plot, and how they intertwine. He argued that these can both be readily defined as masculine or feminine, which I disagree with - but this will be addressed later.

First, though, the difficulty of labeling specific novels. I’d like to star with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Note here that I haven’t read any of the novel in years, and my experience with it is mostly through feminist interpretations. From what I understand, it’s a novel about a woman making great strides in a masculine world, and not only succeeding, but dominating. So: superficially, a celebration of femininity, and the heights of power that it can achieve. In order to accomplish these things, however, the main character had to embrace attributes that are decidedly viewed, at least with the BEM Sex Role Inventory, as masculine - like aggressiveness, domineering, and assuredness. So - just because the main character is a female, does that make it feminine? How does her use of predominantly masculine attributes sway this? It almost makes it a celebration of manliness (lol) in the form of a female. Because of situations like this and others, I’m not quite sure how to proceed.

He also suggested surveying something like 1,000 authors randomly, and asking them how they identified their work. But this, too, is troublesome; how relevant is authorial intent? That’s a difficult one to determine, particularly if this research is to focus on “classic” or works of literature that are widely-regarded as being “good” - a lot of these works will be from dead authors, so surveying them becomes impossible. “But surely a consensus can be reached among readers about this?,” he asked - but hardly. The way that literature is interpreted is entirely subjective, although when it reaches the higher levels of criticism it becomes .. well, still subjective. Everything it still viewed through the lens of the reader - if they identify with and agree with Marxist ideals, then they’re going to want to make cases for or against why a novel is Marxist. So too with the gender of a novel - I personally might identify Atlas Shrugged as masculine, but another reader would not. The trouble, of course, with literary analysis, is that there is room to make both arguments - not merely to make them, but to make them effective. Why I chose to be an English major I will never quite understand.

Just the same, my initial thoughts on how to conduct this are as follows; first, some sort of what my room mate called “commonality of argument” must be established. That is to say, if my conception of books having a gender one way or another isn’t shared by at least some peers, then it’s mostly worthless, I think. So: a survey of possibly fellow students as a starting point. It would contain a couple of things, like asking them to take the BEM Sex Role Inventory - this may or may not end up being relevant, but I’d still like to see if, say, a higher rate of masculinity doesn’t correspond to rating novels as being masculine, and vice versa. I suspect that it will influence it, but I’m not quite sure how - maybe reversed. I personally rank somewhat highly on the feminine measure, and find that I would call more novels masculine than feminine. After that, a series of novels, and maybe asking for a brief, paragraph-long examination. I’d like to inject novels intentionally that are possibly clearly masculine, like, say, Dune or pretty much any Philip K. Dick novel, and some that are clearly feminine like, say, uh .. I’m not sure on this one. Maybe Mary Barton. I’d also like some more troublesome books, like American Psycho and Atlas Shrugged - the former I believe I talked about in class - it’s a celebration, initially, of masculine attributes - and then a damnation of them. I’m curious how people respond to this.

After getting the results from a collection of students, I’d like to apply this to a variety of maybe faculty; the literature professors would probably be the most in-depth, but I think feminist theory and political science professors would also provide interesting responses as well.

My friend Marcus had the following to contribute: Romance Languages are inherently gendered, and therefore almost anything that is discussed through them will have a gender. I’m inclined to agree, but not having any knowledge of non-Romance Languages makes this difficult for me.

Riding the Black Wave: Black Metal as Dystopia

2009-04-21T11:06:00.001-07:00

Okay, so this thing is huge. I explored the links between dystopic narrative and black metal, and in the process examine cyberpunk literature, Dadaist art, and the history/origins of black metal. Again: its fucking huge, so be warned. It got an A. Also - forgive the formatting. Blogger sucks at doing tabs.

Introduction
During the early 1990’s, a series of musicians would emerge from Norway bearing a new breed of heavy metal that represented a direct antithesis to Christian morality, and would create a thematic rhetoric that would simultaneously isolate them from and unite them with other underground, music-based social spheres that were attempting to fight against the various social power structures that they found themselves in. Although they were musically, thematically, and presentationally substantially different from other underground, music-based movements, early Norwegian black metal nonetheless shared a series of important connections to the early punk-rock, industrial and literary movements in America during the 20th century - specifically, that they were all forms of extra-literal dystopic narrative.

Although dystopic narrative is generally reserved to the world of literature, this form of narrative is not necessarily the exclusive domain of literature. In order to establish black metal as a form of dystopic narrative, a series of definitions and examples must first be examined, as the connection between dystopic narrative and black metal is anything but readily apparent. First, dystopic narrative must be defined; as this is a more complicated concept than a paragraph, or indeed several pages could encapsulate, several pieces of literature will be examined so that specific attributes of dystopic narratives can be culled for application outside of the literary world. Second, it must be established that dystopic narrative is not exclusive to film or literature; this will be done, chiefly, by examining the work of Karen Collins in Dead Channel Surfing, who draws a series of connections from dystopic literature to the Dada art movement, and then to early, and even modern, industrial music as being a form of extra-literal dystopic narrative.

Towards a Definition of Dystopic Narrative

One of the key components in dystopic narrative is the othering of either the individual, either through the rejection of an individual by society, or the rejection of a community of people by society at large. Generally, this rejection is rooted in lifestyle choice and personal preference and not the result of forces outside of control of the individual; that is to say, in dystopic narrative, mode of dress and philosophy are more likely to be an ostracizing element than genetic predispositions such as ethnicity. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, for example, the protagonist becomes involved with a group of Zionist rastafarians inhabiting a derelict space station, built and maintained by the group alone, and exists, for the most part, outside of society. Although they are a racial minority - Africans - in the future world of Neuromancer, they have not been rejected specifically as such - rather, they have chosen to live outside of the confines of normal society where they may practice their chosen lifestyle without interference from the world at large.

The Zionist Rastafarians of Neuromancer also speak to a secondary, but still important, aspect of dystopic narrative. As a collective group, the Rastafarians either eschew or are barred from (financially or politically) the highest levels of modern technology, instead using equipment that is at least a generation older than what is considered to be modern. Their only experience with cutting-edge technology takes place as Case, the protagonist of Neuromancer, becomes involved with them in his attempts to free the AI-construct Wintermute - which requires of them a relative integration with a high level of technology. A meeting of the two levels of technology occur when Case and a Rastafarian, Malcolm, enter the location of the novel’s final confrontation; a gigantic, corporate complex situated at the pinnacle of a massive, orbital space station. Case, a hacker, comes armed with his well-trained mind and his deck - his portable computer console/hacking device - and Malcolm, true to Rastafarian form, comes armed with a sawn-off shotgun. This meeting of wildly differing levels of technology is common in dystopic narrative, particularly in that of the cyberpunk sub-genre.

Although their actual reasons for remaining low-tech are unstated in the novel, it runs an interesting parallel to another work of fiction inspired by William Gibson. In the film Johnny Mnemonic, the protagonist, Johnny, finds himself in league with a group of social and political outcasts called the Lo-teks, whom share with the Rastafarians a rejection of modern technology, although for what are clearly-stated political reasons. They adamantly refuse to embrace modern technology, and use it only when it can be employed to attack the dominant power structure. For example, the group, instead of using the wide selection of firearms that were presumably available, has chosen instead to arm themselves with crossbows and the remixing of media; in describing their method of militant action, J-Bone, leader of the Lo-teks, says “This is where we fight back. We strip the little pretty pictures from their five-hundred channel universe, recontextualise it, then we spit that shit back out.”(Johnny Mnemonic) This came in the form of making political messages via a mass-broadcast anti-power structure messages, created from a hodge-podge of media that has been fed to the citizens, and serves the film and short story’s version of a theme found in much dystopic literature, as defined by Collins in Dead Channel Surfing; that there often is a resistance.
“...the socio-economic system of the West will lead to an apocalypse. The apocalypse will lead to, or be caused by, a tolatarian elite controlling the masses through technology, which brings about the need for resistance, usually led by an ousider-hero.” (Collins p. 171)
These themes, including the rejection of modern technology/the embracing of cast-off technology and the alienation/othering of groups and individuals - are, according to Collins, “inherent in nearly all dystopias.” (Collins p.171) There is yet another theme that another writer suggests is critical in dystopic narrative; that in order for a dystopic narrative to be plausible, it must take place outside, either physically or temporally, from the location of the author (Phillips p.190). This aspect, although not picked up by Collins, is present in most, if not all, dystopic narrative; those that do not take place in the future take place in a location outside of the here and now. Further, that these settings are, if possible, to fled from; “Dystopias are negative utopias, images of a future so terribly imperfect that, given a chance, people would prefer to flee as far as their wherewithal can possibly take them.” (Williams p.384)

While dystopic narratives often carry the above collection of themes, they are not necessarily always present, or can be present instead in metaphoric terms, and often the level of emphasis given to each theme varies from work to work. In order to examine how each of these themes functions outside of the confines of the literary world, the remainder of them - the outsider hero/anti-hero, the totalitarian social/political control group, and the ‘extraordinary journey’ required to enter into a dystopic setting - must be examined in further detail.

The anti-hero has become all-but tradition in dystopic narrative. Instead of the gun-toting, self-righteous hero found often in storytelling, the anti-hero is rather a protagonist because he has to be, not because he wants to be. To return to Neuromancer, the protagonist, Case, is working for Armitage - and through Armitage, the artificial intelligence construct Wintermute - not because he wants to, but because he has to. Due to a botched thieving operation several years before the novel begins, Case was surgically barred from being able to access cyberspace (a term coined in Neuromancer that means more or less the Internet) - no small punishment for a hacker that relied on cyberspace access to earn his way. For payment for a hacking operation that was financed and run by Armitage - the novel’s sort-of antagonist - has Case’s hacking capacity surgically restored, which establishes a debt to Armitage and, through Armitage, Wintermute. He also has a series of toxin sacs sewn into Case’s body, and warns the hacker that if he fails in the operation, or evades the completion of it, then the toxin sacs will dissolve and kill Case. Armitage, having the chemical compound that will safely break down the toxin sacs and dissolve them harmlessly, has sufficient leverage over Case to compel him to complete the mission.

In a way, this also touches on another element of dystopic narrative; that there isn’t necessarily a protagonist or a hero, despite what Collins may suggest. Although Neuromancer follows Case in exclusivity, one only begins to sympathize with him due to time spent with his thoughts and actions - not necessarily because one agrees with them. His motives are never defined or driven by or through altruism, and indeed the most elated the reader ever sees Case is when he manages to find a particularly intense form of narcotic stimulant and is high for the first time in many weeks. One cannot sympathize with Wintermute, whom is orchestrating the vast majority of the novel - although his motives never seem to quite be hostile towards anyone in particular, they are never defined as being benign, or even as anything at all - they simply are, and tend to exist outside of sympathy. This will later be mirrored by black metal artists; although it is easy to understand the plight of their situation, being at the whim of a society that does not and cannot accept them, it is difficult, at least for most people, to sympathize with their goals.
Case finds himself compelled to achieve the goals of those with power over him, further alienating and othering what is seen as the protagonist due to the inherent imbalance of power. This is meant, often, as an indictment of the power structure at large; the methods used to compel characters in dystopic novels range from the relatively benign, like removing one’s capacity to profit in a capitalistic system, to cruel and barbaric, like the Big Brother-branded fascism that forces the hand of 1984’s Winston Smith - but they are never desirable, especially from characters that want merely to be left alone.

Were these characters let alone, however, then the conflict of a dystopic narrative - and thereby the actual story of the narrative - would not be present. These conflicts most often arise as a result of actions by some fashion of large, omnipresent, and often fascist state or corporate entity that has a great deal of control over the people and characters of a dystopic narrative. In Neuromancer, this occurs in layers; firstly, with Armitage, whom has a direct mechanism for controlling Case - his life. Secondly, with Wintermute, whom controls Case both indirectly, through Armitage, whom Wintermute has been manipulating for years preceding the novel, and directly, by speaking to Case and appearing to him in cyberspace. Thirdly, through the Tessier-Ashpool Coroporation, the massive corporate entity that initially engineered Wintermute and whom the plot ultimately revolves around, and to a lesser extent, the various governmental entities that work against Case as he attempts to free Wintermute.

Although dystopian narratives are often extrapolated nightmares of various technological and social aspects of the present day in the real world, they are, as Williams said, never a place one would choose to visit willingly. Thankfully, aside from extra-literal representations of dystopic narratives like Dadaist art and industrial/black metal music, these dystopias cannot be accessed by we people of the real world. Or can they?

A dystopic world, almost by definition, cannot be found in reality (although this will be explored further later), and indeed is only accessible through something of an extraordinary journey. Often, these take place in the realm of science fiction, requiring a mental journey through time to a relatively technologically advanced age, or to an extra-terrestrial location not readily, or easily, accessible by the people of the real world. Although the government behind 1984’s Big Brother would be seen as somewhat dated by the standards of modern technology, it nonetheless exists in a world much further entrenched with telescreens and mass-communication methods - and therefore control methods - than our own. The technological hellscape of Neuromancer can only be accessed through similar means. Sometimes, however, reality serves as an ideal setting for a dystopic nightmare.

In Richard Phillips’ Dystopian Space in Colonial Representations and Interventions: Sierra Leone as ‘The White Man’s Grave,’ he lays the groundwork for the west African nation as being a real-world dystopia. Initially regarded in the colonialized world as an utopic vision of the future of inter-racial communities, Sierra Leone was among the primary locations of English colonials and freed slaves after 1808. However, the true nature of the colony-cum-nation soon emerged: the bi-racial and black community was almost immediately shunned to the back sections of local culture and barred from any sort of public office, the fragile state of Anglo-Saxon health was ravaged by malaria and poor sanitary conditions, and the colony was reachable only via a long and difficult sea voyage. (Phillips 190-191)

“Like other dystopias, Sierra Leone was constructed as a fallen, failed or inverted utopia. Early writers, in particular, recalled the colony’s utopian ideals (as a home for poor blacks and emancipated slaves, and a place for the advancement of black and mixed-race peoples), and explicitly or implicitly claimed that these ideals failed to deliver. ... [Equiano ((how do I cite this?))] concluded that the utopian project, ‘humane and politic in its design,’ had proved ‘unfortunate in the event’ “ (Phillips p. 193)

Although eventually receiving independence, Sierra Leone initially received it’s directives from England - removing power from the local community, both white and black, and enforcing a sense of alienation from the homeland. That it was so far away almost ensured that it would be quite late in receiving technological advances found throughout much of the “civilized” world, speaking to the technocolonialisation of the region. Finally, the absolute alienation of ethnic minorities in the region ensured that at least one group - the ethnic minority of the ‘civilized’ world, typically - would forever be outside of the prevailing power structure, othering and alienating them permanently.

Mention of this real-world dystopia - the Sierra Leone of the 19th century - is important because it establishes that fiction is not required for dystopia. It asserts that not only do real-world events and situations generate ideas and concepts concerning dystopian narratives, but they themselves can be dystopian narratives. With this in mind, the establishment of other forms of dystopian narratives - chiefly, those of music and art - can be examined.
Extra-Fictional Dystopias: Music and Art as Dystopic Narratives
Can a theme be conveyed in a piece of art without a narrator, or even without characters? Is the intentional hand of an author critical to the establishment of dystopic narratives? Similar to how a fictional element, like dystopia, can be found in the real world, it can also be found outside of the printed, screened, and acted media. Certain elements of dystopian themes have arisen in a variety of mediums over the last century, like the rabidly anti-consumerist artform of dada, or the techno-futurist form of music known as industrial.

According to Collins, “The dadas were keen to expose the dangers of the growing technologisation of society. ... [They] sought to confound the Futurists’ metronomical sense of rational order with chance, ‘unreason,’ illogical nonsense, and a mimicry of automatism which allowed the subconscious (the irrational) to take over.” (Collins p.167) Dadaism, and indeed much of the art of the 20th century, was fixated on broken and distorted imagery, using collages and blatantly anti-consumerist imagery to relay their message. In a study for the New York Graphic Society, Katherine Kuh observed that much of the art over the last century “has been characterized by shattered surfaces, broken color, segmented compositions, dissolving forms, and shredded images.” (Kuh p.11))

These descriptions of the art of the 20th century, that they are fragmented and distorted visions of reality, are dystopic even in their capacity to alienate themselves and their benefactors, share much in common with the relatively new form of electronic music called industrial. Industrial music is typically accredited with originating as a form of dadaist performance art, in which the droning of machines and the use of other industrial objects were used as set pieces;
“Industrial artists such as Einsturzende Neubauten have used instruments that include air ducts, glass, passing trains, ventilation shafts, a shopping cart, jet turbines, pneumatic pistons and various mechanical tools, among many other unconventional sound-making devices. Similarly, other industrial artists create music by using instruments that were recycled, stolen or discarded. At the time of the birth of the industrial genre in the late 1970s, these instruments were sometimes held by artists and fans to represent anti-consumerist technology ... These artists used whatever material was available to them in order to create the music, using found sound and were therefore maintaining what was widely perceived by fans as a highly experimental and anti-consumerist style.” (Collins p.172)
By establishing themselves as anti-consumerist and therefore anti-mainstream culture, through both lyrical themes and by what Collins’ refers to as ‘found sound,’ the industrial and Dadaist artists have willingly ostracized themselves, pushing their message, music and even selves to the fringes of modern culture. This, combined with an obsession with both high-tech and low-tech sounds and a heavy use of the “robotic” voice, and lyrical themes that will be examined briefly, pushed industrial music well into dystopic narrative territory.

Industrial music often uses heavily-distorted vocal tracks to deliver lyrics, preferring a mechanized, “robotic” voice, which helps to further symbolize the artists’ alienation from society. They also speak to the homogenization of man and machine, something widely feared and spoken of in both dystopic literature and artwork. Skinny Puppy, an early industrial band from Canada, has become widely known for their heavy use of the Vocoder (a voice synthesization device) in attempt to sound less human. The robot voice was chosen, according to Brian Aldiss, because:
“The robot is (generally) to be pitied. The robot is in many ways a shadow of ourselves ... Robots are generally solitary since they represent outsiders or antiheroes in human society ... Robots are lonely people because they exemplify current isolations from our industrial society. (Aldiss, p. 3ff)
Lyrically, industrial music often involves themes of empiricism, capitalism, and technocolonialization. The relatively modern industrial band VNV Nation, for example, utilizes synthesized versions of industrial machines, slightly distorted vocal tracks, and a strongly anti-empirical/anti-war message. With their album Praise the Fallen, the band establishes a discourse that revolves around betrayed honor, abused loyalty, a hopeless military conflict, and a celebration of those that came before. It also often carries a rebellious and almost revolutionary tone;
“Stand your ground this is what we are fighting for,
For our spirit and laws and ways.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,
for heaven or Hell, we shall not wait.
Shall I think of honor as lies,
or lament it’s slow demise? (VNV Nation)
Clearly, something is occurring in this song that requires the narrator to, at the least, prepare himself for war. This does not appear to be a war instigated by the people of the narrator, but rather by a foreign force, thus not only establishing the narrator as an “other,” but forcing him to take up arms to defend his nation - establishing him as something of an anti-hero. The line concerning “honor as lies” is particularly interesting, and works with the dystopic discourse on multiple levels. It can be read as a nod to Orwellian Newspeak (how can honor be a lie when it’s the pinnacle of social service?), or of the disillusionment of the narrator from the prevailing political and social hierarchy (if honor is a lie, then why bother with anything else?).

This sense of alienation that arises, through the “robot voice,” lyrical thematics, found sounds and entirely unreal, synthesized sounds, further place industrial music firmly in the camp of dystopic narrative and can be overwhelming. That so many of the sounds are almost futuristic, and at the least, unreal and impossible in the natural world, are suggestive of the extraordinary journey required in order to engage in industrial music. Finally, the broken planes, sounds, images and rejection of consumerist culture - both literal and figurative - that bind the Dadaist movement, 20th century art in general and the industrial music scene together are entirely dystopic elements on their own. These elements, however, like not being constrained merely to literature or film, are also not constrained by the grasp of the continental United States, and would manifest themselves on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in Norway.

The Black Wave: Norwegian Black Metal as a Dystopic Narrative

Today, black metal is fairly well known and fairly widely despised. This is for a variety of reasons, although primarily because it is an intentionally difficult form of music to listen to. Although industrial music, as a result of the mimicry of machines, had a tendency to have a steady, danceable beat, and later even developed into music that was quite easy to pick up and enjoy, black metal - at least, in it’s pure form - never quite managed to find a universal element that most sorts of people enjoy. It combines elements of thrash metal, death metal, grindcore, heavy metal and even some thematic components of folk music to create a sound that is genuinely alien - and dystopic.

In order to examine the dystopic themes of black metal - specifically, Norwegian black metal - the influences that went into developing those dystopic aspects of the form must be examined.

First, there was Black Sabbath. With their album Paranoid, the English band developed an entirely new, and substantially more aggressive sound than had been heard before. Although by many standards today the band isn’t as “extreme” or “hard” as other forms of music, it nonetheless laid the groundwork for several major music movements to come, both musically and thematically. Even their name, Black Sabbath, helped to pave the way for what was to come - being one of the first groups to ever use such blatantly anti-Christian name and themes, they developed a form of almost playfully rebellious rhetoric that would be both embraced and taken further by the bands that would follow them.

Around the same time, another English band, Black Widow, was experimenting with Satanic and anti-Christian themes, both on stage and in the recording studio. Although not a metal band by any measure - their sound approaches much closer to that of traditional folk music - they also helped to pioneer themes that would become dominant during the closing of the 20th century in Norwegian black metal. Their live shows were something akin to that of Throbbing Gristle1 in that they were more about spectacle, social statements and entertainment than raw musical aptitude. Although the band never approached the quantity of records sold that Black Sabbath did, it wasn’t about sales or fame for Kay Garrett, the vocalist and leader of Black Widow; he was simply content that “we were the black magic band.” (Murder Music)

The next major progression in the development of black metal came with yet another English band, Venom. Their debut album, Welcome to Hell, was performed in the same vein as that of the American thrash bands Slayer and Metallica, but thematically they were darker than the violence-based themes of the American bands. Instead of using their real names, or even real-sounding pseudonyms like the American bands, Venom instead opted for names based in fantasy and mythology. Where the thrash bands were singing, primarily, about violence, aggression, and occasionally social justice issues, Venom chose initially to follow suit, adding Satanism and anti-Christian messages to their music in addition to the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that were dominant in the genre. This was further emphasized with the recording of their second album, however - Black Metal, the album that would come to further seed the birth of genre, capitalized on the bands folklorish and Satanic themes and was primarily concerned with the “darker elements of life.”(Murder Music)

Defining their brand of music as black metal, as opposed to other, more popular forms of the day, like thrash metal, heavy metal and death metal, was primarily due to the press. In an interview for the documentary Murder Music, Conrad “Cronos” Lant, Venom’s vocalist, said that
“...if this is what people are calling heavy metal today, Journey and Foreigner and people like that, all lumped into this category: ‘long hair, guitar: heavy metal band.’ We turn around and say, ‘If that’s the case, we’ve got absolutely nothin’ to do with that. So, media being media and press being press, turned around and asked: ‘So what are you? ... Bang! There it is. Black metal, hat’s what we are.” (Murder Music)
Venom quickly became more than just another metal band, both for its fans and for the band itself. Their brand of hate-filled, angry, anti-Christian vocals, and their loud, disharmonic and often chaotic music alienated them even from other metal bands. This wasn’t quite the intentionally-offensive rhetoric of modern groups like Marilyn Manson, but rather that “I think it was more about alienation and individuality than anything else. [There were a lot of good bands], but we were the outcasts. Everybody fuckin’ hated Venom, because we made this unholy fuckin’ racket. ... The black metal thing just alienated us from the mainstream.” (Murder Music)

It is at this point that the connection between black metal and dystopic narrative begins to become apparent, as if dystopic narrative is the story of anything, it is that of the alienation of the individual, and their devaluing in the world at large by the powers that control the media. Venom’s outright rejection of the social and moral standards of the time are a direct testament to this, and their ejection from popular culture only emphasizes this. Just the same, Venom wasn’t quite yet a black metal band - but they paved the way for the coming wave. The final details that would solidify black metal as a genre and a statement would come from Norway, and were centered around the record store Helvete - Norwegian for hell - in Oslo, Norway.

Helvete was owned by the frontman and vocalist of the black metal band Mayhem, Oysten “Euronymous” Aarseth. Note that this is a pseudonym, one of the many concepts that later black metal bands would adopt from this proto-black metal and is derived from the name of the demon Eurynomos (Wikipedia). Here, the various black metal bands that had arisen in Norway would receive their earliest of exposure, and it was also centered around Hell that the myths surrounding black metal would arise - Satanism, misanthropy, and the church burnings. Three of the largest black metal bands - all whom would initially publish works under Deathlike Silence Productions, the label Euronymous created - were Mayhem, Enslaved and Burzum.

They, and other bands from Deathlike Silence Productions, took the groundwork laid by bands like Black Sabbath and Venom and brought them to an entirely new level, using themes and theatrical concepts developed over decades. On the genre, Asbjorn Slettenmark, a music journalist, would say that “Black metal is all about creating the most hateful, gruesome, and almost cheap sound there is, and it’s very much meant to be cult music.”(Murder Music) Not only cult music, but almost exclusive music - similar to the late 1970’s American punk bands, black metal musicians weren’t writing and performing music to attract new fans, or even to ‘make it big.’ Rather, they developed a sound that was intentionally grating, alienating, and difficult to listen to, ensuring that they would have a form of art entirely their own.

This ‘difficulty of listenability’ was intentional - the more distorted, garbled and disharmonic sounds that characterize black metal are intended to alienate the non-fan, and force him into an outsider mentality. This changed the typical hierarchy of the black metal social outcast and the ‘normal’ Christian - instead of the black metal fan being outcast from society, it was the normal person being rejected from the black metal community. Embracing this “unholy fuckin’ racket” as a form of art symbolized the alienation of the fan from normal culture, allowed him to find inclusion in a group of peers, and empowered him in a culture where he previously had none.

However, inclusion in the black metal community was, or was at least perceived as, more difficult than simply listening to and appreciating the form. It was often seen by fans that actual direct and physical action was required for acceptance and inclusion, and this manifested itself, at least originally, in the form of a string of more than fifty church burnings between 1992 and 1996.(Wikipedia) This was done to demonstrate to the church, and indeed the world at large the anger and frustration that was felt by Christianity’s social death-grip on the world they found themselves in. It is difficult to determine whether or not the burnings were meant to achieve any greater purpose than the initial arson, or if they were merely statements of dedication and devotion to the ideology of black metal, and even the community remains split regarding the efficacy and purpose of these burnings. Some black metal artists, like Infernus and Graahl of the band Gorgoroth, praised the burnings in an interview, stating that “there should have been more of them, there will be more of them.”(Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey) Necrobutcher and Kjetil Manheim of Mayhem, however, disagreed; "It was just people trying to gain acceptance within a strict group ... they wanted some sort of approval and status."(Once Upon a Time in Norway)

That even fans of black metal struggled for acceptance in the community is interesting - simply being a fan of the form of music wasn’t enough for social acceptance and approval in the community, and it was perceived by some members of that community that the only way to gain acceptance was to lash out against both other members of the community, and against the Christian church. In most social spheres that center around a form of music, simply enjoying that form of music may not be enough for acceptance - this is a common enough theme. For example, it would have been tremendously difficult to find friends in the American punk-rock community during the late 1970’s had one been an active supporter of Ronald Reagan, but actually taking direct, physical action against the politician was not required, or even perceived as being required, to be a member of the community. The quantity layers of isolation, alienation and struggle for community that run throughout the art form are striking.

Dystopic narrative, however, concerns more than alienation and individuality. Typically, works of dystopia are set in a time and place somehow removed from the present. They also tend to involve higher levels of technology than the present world can produce, and indeed are often based on extrapolations of modern-day technology and social trends. Although black metal rarely concerns things like future technology, social trends and the future, they are still elements of a dystopic narrative, although extra-literal approaches must be taken to further link the two art forms.

Norwegian black metal’s use of Satanic, anti-Christian imagery and themes has a purpose deeper than the mere shock value and symbols of alienation conveyed by these messages; rather, it is a reaction against the prevailing norms of Norwegian and Christian values. In the Scandinavian world, the Christian church - at least, as perceived by black metal artists - reigns supreme as governmental entity, arbiter of social values and norms, and purveyor of acceptable and popular culture. To these artists, the church represents the fascist, capitalist-corporate nightmare that is often the antagonist of dystopic narratives, and the church burnings have literary parallels - like Case’s resistance against the Tessier-Ashpool Corporation found in Neuromancer, and Winston Smith’s resistance against Big Brother and Oceania in 1984, and to this end it is important to, at least in some capacity, lash out against the church.

Characters found in dystopic narratives are generally able to achieve some sort of action against the capitalist-corporate nightmares, and through this achieve, theoretically, freedom, equality and respect. In the black metal world, this can be achieved too, although it isn’t through the channels of resistance typically associated with these sorts of narratives. Rather, this resistance comes about most often through channels of self-expression, like with their fiery anti-Christian rhetoric and stage performances, and the attempted conversion of Christians to their cause.

Even the stage of black metal concerts is dominated by these same modes of self-expression and rejection of Christian values. Black metal bands, at least originally, almost always presented themselves decorated with corpsepaint, which is intended to make the wearer appear dead (Murder Music). Corpsepaint is a cosmetic worn covering the entire face, and consists mostly of a bright-white base with black details, such as circles around the eyes and lines around the mouth, although red - to represent blood - has also been used.

By appearing dead on stage, black metal artists manage to encapsulate several elements of dystopic narratives simultaneously. The easiest of these to see returns again to alienation and othering - by appearing to be dead, and occasionally acting as if dead, they place themselves outside of not merely the culture and community of the living world, but outside of the living world itself. They also approach the concept of a great journey through this, although this is also due to lyrical themes that appear in their work. By appearing, performing, and speaking as if they were dead, they force the listener into an ancient and mythological world in which the dead could rise and the old gods reigned over the land. Although dystopic narratives generally develop this journey as being over great tracts of land, space, or a forwarding through time, conceptually - at least, as far as the general concept of locational shifting and a ‘great journey’ is concerned - they are the same.
Speaking on lyrical themes and stage presence perhaps skirts around the final, and perhaps most symbolically significant, aspect of a black metal performance: the shrieked vocals. In the thrash metal of the 80’s, vocals were sometimes growled, but more often than not shouted and/or sung, albeit loudly (see: Slayer, early Metallica). When death metal and grindcore emerged, vocal stylings shifted into deep, guttural growls that were bestial in nature (see: Cannibal Corpse, Amon Amarth). Almost bizarrely, black metal shifted to a higher vocal range - the only way to effectively describe this sound is the howl and wail of a banshee - which is interesting particularly because the banshee is, as far as modern science is concerned, not a real creature. This further emphasizes the otherness and alienation of the black metal band - aspects of it cannot even be described using conventional, reality-based concepts. Further, the sound produced was almost demonic; twisted and tortured, it was a further statement against the church, and an admission of misery and torment on behalf of the vocalist. The correlation here between the “robotic,” alienated voice of industrial music should be apparent.
This lyrical and theatrical reversal through time, and even reality, performs well in tandem with another aspect of black metal - the typically DIY and low-fidelity sound that, at least initially, always accompanied black metal performances and recording. The use of this low-quality production accomplishes several things: it further emphasizes the ‘difficulty of listenability’ aesthetic so embraced by black metal; it rejects modern and popular conceptions that recorded music ought to be as high-quality and enjoyable as possible - a concept similar to that of Johnny Mnemonic’s Lo-tek’s; it forces the listener into an earlier era of recording and even art, pointing again to the time-shifting properties of black metal; it allows for genuinely amateur and grass-roots artists to emerge as important, regardless of their capacity to record in high-quality; and, finally, it allows for the emergence of the despondent theme and atmosphere that is prevalent in black metal to become even more pronounced. It’s almost like listening to what the vikings would have played if they had electric guitars.2

The rejection of high-quality recording speaks again to dystopic narratives; about technology found in these narratives, Collins says that “it is representative of power [and] used as a symbol of alienation. ... technology becomes a symbol for the loss of individual sovereignty. Typically, a kind of ‘friendly fascism’ is maintained through media manipulation.” (Collins p. 172) By using somewhat dated technology for both recording and performing, artists are enabled to make a brand of sound that is entirely alien to that which is proliferated by what is seen as the Christian world and media, and also entirely their own. As in dystopic narratives, “the technology used by the resistance is often cast-off older technology rather than the latest high-tech products,” (Collins p.172) Although difficult to determine whether this use of low-technology was based on a conscious decision to differentiate themselves from the ‘friendly fascism’ of the Christian-controlled media of that region of the world or because they have no choice, due either to economic or social reasons, it again runs in tandem with Collins’ view of dystopic narrative; “it is significant that the resistance does not choose (or cannot choose) the latest technology.” (Collins p.172) It is significant, in the case of black metal, because it’s practitioners and support base wish, again, to make it clear that they are entirely alien to the power/media base in a strikingly similar fashion to Johnny Mnemonic’s Lo-tek organization, at least in their application of technology.

The atmosphere of despondence found in black metal is, at least initially, surprising. It would be easy to assume that black metal was more easily characterized as being angry and in a constant state of rage, particularly considering the shriek of the typical black metal vocalist and the aggressive, rapid pace of the guitar work and percussion. However, when taken as a whole - particularly with synthesizer elements that arose early after the establishment of black metal as a legitimate genre - most black metal comes off as disturbing, disorienting, and depressing, enraged not to the state of exploding in violence but rather with the knowledge that despite all efforts, everything is futile. That said, this is a view that is held by the author and may not be readily apparent to the casual listener.

An example of all of these elements can be found in Emperor’s Towards the Pantheon. The song exemplifies the dark, deep, and depressing mood found in much of black metal, and the shriek and wail of Isahn is soul-destroying in the most profound of ways. Lyrically, Towards the Pantheon revolves around concepts typical to black metal, as can be seen here:
May the wolves start to howl again
May the age of darkness arise
We will travel for eternities
into the unknown reaches what we seek.
Fight the ways through the barriers of light, through the wastelands
where nothing but grief have become the eternal memory.
...
We will grant him their pain.
He will grant us his flame.
In flesh and blood, he will arise
to deliver the key.
As the armour’s black robe slides across the landscape
we see the land of wisdom, strength, and pure evil ...
Darkness, frost, hate ...
The throne will be ours.(Emperor)
This celebration of almost pagan imagery, such as this god of blood, fire, and the wolves, is fairly representative of black metal lyrical styles. Although not directly antagonistic to Christianity, these lines little room for interpretation that the speaker is actually celebrating Christianity in any way - indeed, his hope for the land of “wisdom, strength, and pure evil” are a tacit reaching for concepts expressly forbidden in Christianity. Even “Darkness, frost, hate” is metaphorically anti-Christian, and represent an antithesis of Christian hopes and values.

All which speaks yet further to the alienation and othering nature of black metal; it isn’t a form of music that can either be played or appreciated by the casual listener. It requires a genuine desire to want to do either to be able to approach any sort of level of appreciation of the form, and initially it’s more likely to induce headaches and irritation in people than enjoyment and rapture. Indeed, black metal wasn’t originally centered around particular musical conventions; bands like Venom, considered to be one of the founding groups of the black metal genre, had a radically different sound than other founding groups like Mayhem and Burzum. It revolved, rather, on thematic concepts like the rejection of Christianity and old-world mythology, and as such initial approaches to the form were wildly differentiated from one another. It wasn’t until Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse - form which the above song, Towards the Pantheon, was taken - that these elements became fused together in a coherent sound that would be repeated for decades.

Conclusion
As the genre has become more and more well-defined, the dystopic elements found within it have slowly left the form. Although the Satanic/anti-Christian conventions are still maintained by most of the artists, it no longer seems to be about directly speaking out against the dominant power structure - rather, it has become about conforming to an internationally-known and, in a sense, accepted art form. By placing the anti-Christian spin as a sales mechanism instead of a statement, the art form almost tacitly acknowledges that it’s no longer about rebellion - rather, it’s about making money and attaining recognition. Each aspect that made black metal what it was - the shrieked vocals, the corpse paint, the anti-Christian themes - has become more of a method of developing a public persona than necessarily as a method to rebel against conformity. Much like the American punk-rock movement of the late 1970’s, the form eventually became too large to retain it’s dystopic roots, which is particularly depressing as the actual music made by the artists has grown in quality since the 1990’s.

For a brief period of time in the history of Europe, the terrible, disturbing, and almost-necessary face of extra-literal dystopia was alive and well, and could be referred to only as black metal. With ghost-white faces, massively-spiked gauntlets, and armed with electronic axes and banshee wails, the black metal artists spoke out with a fervor and fury that is only rarely matched in the extra-literal world. They pioneered a form of music that would endure for, at the time of writing, nearly three decades, and would allow both it’s fans and others aware of it’s message to embrace a side of life that was darker than what they had ever seen before - and, perhaps, anything they would see again.

Journal and Literary Sources:
1.Aldiss, B.W. “Robots: low-voltage ontological currents.” The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction. ed. T.P. Dunn and R.D. Elrich. Greenwood Press, 1982: 3-9.
2.Collins, Karen. “Dead Channel Surfing: the commonalities between cyberpunk literature and industrial music.” Popular Music Volume 24/2 (2005): 165-178.
3.Kuh, Catherine. “Break-Up.” Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1965.
4.Gibson, William. “Neuromancer.” New York: Ace Books, 1984.
5.Phillips, Richard. “Dystopian Space in Colonial Representations and Interventions: Sierra Leone as ‘The White Man’s Grave’.” Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography Volume 84 Number 3/4, Special Issue: The Dialects of Utopia and Dystopia (2002): 189-200.
6.Williams, Douglas E. “Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of “Blade Runner.” International Political Science Review. Volume 9 Number 4 (1988): 381-394

Music, Film, and Web Sources:
1.Emperor. “Towards the Pantheon.” In the Nightside Eclipse. Candlelight Records, 1994.
2.“Johnny Mnemonic”. Dir. Robert Longo. Perfs. Keanu Reeves, Ice-T. DVD. Tristar Pictures, 1995.
3.“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Dir. Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, Jessica Joy Wise. Writers: Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, Jessica Joy Wise. DVD. Banger Productions, 2006.
4.“Murder Music: A History of Black Metal.” Dir. David Kenny. Perfs. Abbath, Dani Filth, Asbjorn Slettenmark. Accessed online at . Rockworld TV, 2007.
5.“Once Upon a Time in Norway.” Dir. Pal Aasdal, Martin Ledang. Perfs. Necrobutcher, Billy Nordheim, Kjetil Manheim. Accessed via Youtube. Grenzelos Productions, 2008.
6.VNV Nation. “Honour.” Praise the Fallen. Off Beat, 1998.

Other Sources Referenced:
1. Entries for: black metal, Helvete, Emperor.
2. Entries for: Murder Music, Once Upon a Time in Norway, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Johnny Mnemonic.
3.
4.

Obama, Machiavelli, and the Prince

2009-04-18T21:39:00.001-07:00

A bit of forewarning: as I’ve spent the entirety of the last two weeks writing about purely academic, literary concepts, I’d really like to explore something a little bit more political. Due to this, I’ve chosen to write about a chapter found in Howard Zinn’s Passionate Declarations, which is a rather large book, and can really best be summed up as a damnation of U.S. foreign and internal policy, as well as something of an attack against the ideologies that prop it up. That isn’t to say it’s anti-American; rather, it’s pro-humanist, and against the various policies that the U.S. has enacted that has been against the bettering of humanity as a whole. It’s kind of difficult to describe it succinctly, and it also doesn’t help that I haven’t read it in its entirety for well over a year.

That said, I did read the chapter called ‘Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy.’ Early in the chapter, Zinn lays out a variety of theories and political concepts that Machiavelli, the 16th century Italian statesman/political theorist, laid out. Chief among them is the notion that the means justify the ends, provided that the ends are good unto themselves. This concept has been used repeatedly throughout history to justify all manner of atrocities, including but not limited to, the bombing of Cambodia whom, when we were bombing, we were, officially, at peace with, and of pretty much conquering the entirety of Latin America for economic gain.

Arguments are often made that the actions taken south of Mexico were to preserve national security and to fend off the communists, but Zinn argues, persuasively, otherwise; he says that these actions, such as the Bay of Pigs incident and, before the socialist uprising of Fidel Castro, the installment of the despot Batista in Cuba, that we enacted not to stop communism - specifically, Russian communism, which could not have realistically invaded the U.S. from socialist Cuba, or any other part of South America (he cites the inability of the Russians to win a war with Afghanistan - on their own border - as proof of this) - but, as stated, to secure the economic interests of the U.S. He quotes a U.S. senator (unnamed, unfortunately) who, when asked about the U.S. essentially going to war with Panama over access to its canal, said simply, “We stole it fair and square.”

Zinn moves forward to describe another concept critical to Machiavellian politics; that of the Fox and the Lion. The Fox, he says, must deceive both his enemy and his people; lacking the raw power necessary to subdue them by force, he must convince them that his ways are the best ways. The Lion, he says, must alternatively crush his enemies, sometimes because, simply, he can, but most often because they are aware of the deception enacted by enemies.

Zinn extends this concept further, and labels “Advisors” as critical elements of both Lion and Fox methodologies. He uses the example of Henry Kissinger as a primary Fox - he was primarily responsible for the bombings of Cambodia, and has been implicated in a great many atrocities committed in southern Asia. Most importantly, it was, again, Kissinger that was responsible - not the Prince that he played Advisor to. By permitting Advisors to be the great movers of potential evil, it shields the Prince - who must always attend to either the love or the domination of his people - from damages incurred by actions done by the Advisor. This is what gives rise to the term, “plausible deniability,” and has been used throughout American history to commit a great many evils.

At this point, I would like to move away somewhat from the text and delve into current matters of politics. As we are all aware at this point, Barack Obama has become President, ushering in - we hope, and were promised - an era of progressive change. I’m tempted to even capitalize change because it was such a massively Big Idea, but is change what the American people are receiving?

Last week, Obama appointed the fifth RIAA - the Recording Industry Association of America - to the Department of Justice, most notably the guy that took Tanya Anderson to trial for sharing a handful of mp3s online. I cannot find, at the moment, his name, but just the same, the RIAA has been responsible for a series of lawsuits against individuals for sharing a variety of music files online. Most often, these were cases involving college students, single mothers, and other normal people - these are not wealthy people, nor are they people attempting to attain wealth by distributing music online. The RIAA sued them, in some cases - Tanya Anderson’s included - for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Somehow, these corporations felt that this was fair.

By appointing these RIAA lawyers to the DoJ, Obama has not demonstrated the Change that he was elected to produce - rather, it appears that he is pandering instead to the major businesses of our nation. This somewhat digresses from the Machiavellian concepts laid out earlier, and indeed, will be dissimilar for now - but what stance will Obama himself take when these lawyers begin using their cruel and evil tactics on people that deserve nowhere near as harsh of a treatment as they will receive? I imagine, he will say, that he has plausible deniability - that the DoJ lawyers were individually responsible, and not him. I seem to recall DoJ Chief Gonzales using this exact argument when allegations were brought against him. This is not the Change that I voted for.

Further damning, the Obama administration has invoked the ‘State Secret’ privelage multiple times since coming to office, most recently to protect both the federal government and the telecom companies from being sued by the American people for violating their Constitutional rights to privacy. The particularly painful part is that Obama himself, both before and during his Presidential bid, fought against exactly this kind of treatment of the American people. Again, this is not the Change that we voted for - rather, this is a continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies that have all but damned our nation in the eyes of the world. The following quote comes from a Salon.com article that I found interesting, although possibly uncited, asking exactly the same question I have posited;
“Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies' obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?
In a word, yes.”

So, at the least, it’s not just me that’s upset by this. I remember, before the actual election and during the campaign, speaking with some friends about this; “Man, if he fucks this up, then our entire generation will be as jaded as Kennedy’s after they shot him.” I’m beginning to fear that this is happening, and quite faster than anyone could have anticipated - although Obama has made many conciliatory moves on the international front, he remains positively damned on the home front. My fear in this is that he will continue hiding behind the Bush secrecy doctrine - why is this a fear? Because there can be no great Advisor, in the Machiavellian sense, than a policy that is utterly immune to prosecution.

The Punjabi and the Apostate

2009-04-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

About a mile from my small apartment near downtown Flint is a fairly typical party store that I stop in regularly, most often for cigarettes and, depending on the time of day, beer or this weird creamy greenish lime beverage that my room mate has impressed upon me a certain fondness. Almost every time I enter the store, a 20-something man of what I’d always thought was Indian descent is working behind the counter. I do not know his name, but he’s friendly and knows my brand - so I rather like him.

On occasion, he has a laptop open to a movie or some website. As it sits behind the counter, I can never quite make out what he’s watching. Today, it was a song, and I decided to ask him what it was; “Punjabi,” he said. “A sad song. I like sad songs.” I asked if it was anything like the Ballywood musicals that my girlfriend likes, and he said it was. I asked him if he or his family was from India.

“Yes,” he said, his face lighting up - it seemed like he didn’t get asked personal questions very often in his position.

“So what are you doing in Flint? It’s a pretty shitty city,” and this is true. We have, I have come to understand, more liquor stores per capita than churches, and we’re one of the few American cities with this designation.

“We came first to New York, and it was nice there - but it slowly got worse.” He didn’t really allude to why he was in Flint, or even elaborate on what happened in New York. I asked him if he was going to school here. “No,” he said, somewhat sadly and almost determinedly. “I don’t have the time for school - I have to work.”

I could hear the sad, Punjabi song playing on the tinny speakers over the hum of the other conversations swirling around the store, and felt it appropriate. We talked a little bit longer and I, in my awkward never-knowing-quite-what-to-say fashion, said that if he found time, he should try and attend the university nearby that I attend. I kind of regret saying this; I feel like I made quite clear my insensitivity to the plight of an immigrant, and, in my ignorance and lack of understanding, probably didn’t help things any.

He smiled and, the conversation petering out, and I collected my cigarettes and creamy greenish lime beverage, left the store, and got into my car.

The new[er] Rotting Christ album was playing. They are an aggressive death metal band with an almost black metal anti-Christian lyrical slant; angry music that I enjoy.

I couldn’t help but mournfully sigh as I realized the weird juxtaposition of these two musical forms next to each other, and wonder: what do I have to be so angry about that I’d spend all of my time listening to death metal? My life is pretty good. I don’t have much money to spend on nice things, indeed having just enough to survive and attend university. I don’t even have to work, yet still: there is the death metal.

I also realized that, instead of feeling genuine compassion for the man, I had planned on using the encounter as something to write about - all while the Rotting Christ album was playing in my home.

Satan Speaks

2009-04-17T23:51:00.001-07:00

Also, this was in a comment thread I found on Boing Boing today. It was in an entry about this pastor that got his ass kicked for standing up for his 4th amendment rights - it was a deeply disturbing video. Anyway, I loved the following comment, as I find I agree with it absolutely:

"It doesn't matter whether the thug has a badge or not. When someone with a gun and low intelligence tells you to do something, you do it - whether it's to fill the bag full of cash or open the door for an unreasonable search or be taken as a hostage in the high seas. You let the bully win that particular battle and live to fight another day whether that means killing them or taking them to court for civil rights violation. Every moment has a winner and loser and if you are not capable of defeating your enemy at a particular moment, you have to back down and comply, only so you can attack later. It is nature's law and when you're out there, the concept of God, Democracy, and your sense of righteousness are not effective weapons to get your way."

This was written, of all people, by someone using the handle Lucifer.

Regarding the Chosen People of God

2009-04-17T23:49:00.001-07:00

I recently read an article about how the King James Bible was the only true version of the Bible. I sent the author the following: (I'll do the cut thing later, tired now)

Hi there - if you could, please pass this along to Pastor Anderson:

Firstly, my condolences on your recent struggle with law enforcement.
I am both outraged at what was done to you, and support you in your
struggle in every way.

I am a young Christian attending university in Michigan, and recently
read your essay titled "Correcting the King James Bible," found here:
. I found
myself conflicted, both with the concept and the argumentation that
you presented. I was hoping that you could shed some light on this
for me.

I had a question regarding your argument regarding the King James
Bible being the direct word of God. You allude briefly to the concept
that the Gentiles were the chosen people of God, and this is thesis is
supported heavily and convincingly by almost any reading of the Old
Testament. However, you do not examine not only why they were the
chosen people, but also why they remained the chosen people. This is
not necessarily problematic to the argument you present, but I feel
that it may be relevant to consider.

It would appear that, throughout the early history of Israel, they
were an oppressed, weak, and bullied people. This is not to say that
they did not have periods of great power, both economically and
militarily, as under certain periods they did. Forgive the lack of
citation, although I imagine you require little in the way. However,
it would seem that they were, predominantly over their history as
presented Biblically, an oppressed people, almost forever at the whim
of another nation. I would make the argument that this is a
fundamental component of their character as a people, and also why God
had chosen them: always was Yahweh on the team of the oppressed, as
this has been demonstrated even after the Biblical periods have ended.
It would strike me that God would be consistent in His decision of
what people would be a chosen people, and the adoptive status as
"Chosen People" by the very early Christians support this.

Note now that I will use the term "Chosen People" to denote "Chosen by
God to bear his words," or, "the people chosen by God to carry the
most true version of the Word of God."

The question that I have is this: why would God select, of all
Christian nations, to preserve His sacred word as the English?
Although they had not yet reached the height of their power at the
time of the translation of the King James version, they shortly would
be - surely, God would have seen the rise of England during the
eighteenth and nineteen centuries, and used this as part of his
decision for which people he would decide were his Chosen. Even
during the time of the translation, the English were certainly neither
a weak nor oppressed people; indeed, they had begun their campaign of
imperialism that would last into the twenty-first century that would
propel them to the absolute pinnacle of global power.

The language and translation used in the King James Bible would go on
to be adopted by the United States of America, which, as you are
surely aware, has become the most powerful nation on earth, and, like
seventeenth century England, was and is anything but an oppressed
state. This begs the question: why were the English, and subsequently
the Americans, chosen by God? Although we cannot know the infinitely
mysterious ways of God, it is nonetheless important to at least
attempt to rationalize either them, or man's interpretation of them -
as you have argued so persuasively, no living version of the Bible is
in existence that consists of the original Hebrew or Greek text. As
God has remained silent on definitively stating which people (aside
from the Gentiles) were the Chosen People, it thus falls to man to
determine this.

Given that thousands of other translations of the Words of God exist,
it would seem, at least initially to my readings, that other people
would perhaps be more suitable to the mantle of being the Chosen
People of God. Surely, an oppressed nation with the greatest purity
would have been chosen instead, rather than our all-powerful nation
that contains within its borders an extraordinarily diverse selection
of people, both pure and unpure. It can also be assumed that this
conceptual "real" collection of the Word(s) of God would not be in
English, which, again, is the language of the people of the earth at
the absolute pinnacle of power.

I have read your essay concerning this, and believe that your argument
is, at least in part, reliant on the concept that English is the most
widely-spoken language in the world, and also that the King James
Bible is the largest-selling version of the Bible. These cannot be
seen as indicators that man has chosen correctly - man is an
infinitely fallible creature and, as the Catholics you mentioned in
your article speak to, can do great evil while meaning good. That is
not to say that I am stating the the King James version is evil, or
any variant on that theme - hardly.

So, we have come to this; easily-read indicators of God's choice
cannot be trusted, as they are determined by man, whom is inherently
fallible and cannot be trusted; English is symbolic both of the
English people and of the American people, whom have been, at one time
or another, at the height of global power, and due to this are
incompatible with the inherently 'oppressed' nature of the Gentiles,
which was, among other reasons, why they were chosen by God; and we
cannot trace the historicity and the scriptural validity of any
translation of the bible because no reliable original text exists.

As I quite prefer the King James Bible above any other, including the
"New" version, I was hoping that you had a deeper argument to present
that might reaffirm my hope that I am reading the correct version of
the Bible. I would hate to be wrong!

A sincere thank you,

Daniel A. Russ

On the Objectification of Subordinates in The Book of Saladin

2009-02-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Essay written for a special topics in literature class. It received an A. I don't think this is the version I turned in, but I wanted to throw this up so it was uh, something. Stoking my vanity, maybe.

Although much is made of the apparent equality of all men under the eyes of Allah - particularly during a jihad - this is seldom achieved in Tariq Ali's The Book of Saladin. Even under the guise of friendship, the value of one character to another in seems to often be measured only by what that character is capable of doing for another. Throughout the novel, individuals are frequently delegated to the rank of possessions, and few characters - most notably Shadhi - ever manage to escape this. The objectification of subordinates is a theme found throughout Saladin, and suggests a multitude of views that Ali has on authority, military/political hierarchies, and the life and social aspects of the ancient Muslim world in general.

In the weeks preceding the final campaign to Jerusalem, the novel's narrator and protagonist, Ibn Yakub mentions that, for the Sultan Salah al-Din, "It was necessary to show both friend and enemy that, in a jihad, all were equal in the eyes of Allah." (p. 240) This is a troubling thought given the importance that s placed on rank during the campaign. Although all of the soldiers in the camp hail from throughout the Muslim world, eat the same food from the same cooks, and are es expected to lay down their lives for the cause as anyone else, they are not welcome in the tents where the highest levels of strategy are to be deployed. That honor is instead reserved for Salah al-Din's closest and most trusted military generals and advisors, such as his nephews Taki al-Din and Farrukh Shah and, sometimes for the sake of historicity, the scribe Ibn Yakub. The soldiers, then, are equal to their superiors in the food they eat, the loot they may pillage from conquered cities, and the level of ribaldry they can spew in front of the camp fires - but not for sensitive topics such as strategy. This implies a strange sort of equality, and one reflected by many of the characters found in the novel.

This treatment of inferiors is most often demonstrated through the actions of the characters that surround Ibn Yakub, and sometimes by him as well. Although Salah al-Din treats Ibn Yakub with generosity and great courtesy, never are Ibn Yakub's personal wishes and drives acknowledged by the Sultan. The Sultan uses him in his official capacity - as a personal scribe - to great effect, and in this context his objectification of Ibn Yakub is understandable. However, as the novel moves forward and the Sultan seems to begin to view Ibn Yakub as a friend, the underlying dynamic of their relationship - subject and master - is never quite escaped. After Ibn Yakub returns from Cairo - where his family had been murdered by raiding Franj soldiers - he immediately visits with the Sultan. Whereas old friends and relative equals might embrace and enquire on the mental well-being of a friend after having dealt with such an ordeal, the Sultan instead immediately begins to recount his most recent failings and struggles with the jihad – and the scribe's troubles ignored.

Ibn Yakub seems to be unmindful of the lack of care expressed by the Sultan, and views him always as a superior instead of a friend. As their relationship begins early in the novel, Ibn Yakub acknowledges this when he fails to recognize the Sultan in his own home; prostrating himself before the Sultan, Ibn Yakub says, "Forgive my for not recognizing Your Majesty. Your slave begs forgiveness." (p. 5) Establishing early on the dynamic that would follow the pair throughout the novel, the Sultan responds by saying, "I do not care much for slaves. They are too prone to rebellion." (p. 5) Although possible that Ibn Yakub was following a societal norm in his address of the Sultan, his innate sense of inferiority is telling.

Telling, too, is the Sultan's response - rather than implying that Ibn Yakub was not his slave, he suggests instead that he'd rather he was something below even the status of the slave - something incapable of rebellion, perhaps. Mere days after this exchange, during the scribe's first official appointment with the Sultan, Ibn Yakub comments, "My hand began to move on the paper, pushed as if by a force much greater than me." (p. 30) Although this "greater force" could be any number of things - up to and including, potentially, Ibn Yakub's god - it is most certainly not Ibn Yakub himself. He is merely the instrument of more powerful hands, and seldom is seen as otherwise, whether by himself or by those around him.
Even when dealing with social issues not related directly to the Sultan or his court, the disparity between social/political ranks among characters is ever-present. The scribe's first interactions with women in the novel have him on both sides of this dynamic, both as subordinate and master. The former comes during his first meeting with the Sultana Halima, whom had been saved from a public execution by the Sultan so that he might keep her in his harem - whether by her choice or not. Clearly confused as to the intentions of Halima's desire for audience with him - and intimidated by her beauty and intelligence - Ibn Yakub begins their conversation by saying nothing, provoking Halima to ask, "Have you been struck dumb, scribe?" (p.92) Ibn Yakub indicates that he has not, and "assume[s] there was something [Halima] wished to communicate to me. You see I have brought my equipment with me so that I may transcribe your every utterance." (p. 92) In the first few exchanges between the pair, a hierarchy between them has become clear; Halima, who often seems to look down on everyone around her, is well aware that she has the initial advantage, and her vague insult signifies this. Ibn Yakub himself went into the conversation with an understanding that he was an object to be used by the Sultana - hence his equipment and hesitancy to initiate conversation. His first thought after mentioning his capacities as a scribe are that "She ignored my display of servility," (p. 92) suggesting perhaps that either she didn't care about what his skills were and wanted him for something else, or that she was above even servility – but she was nonetheless in a position above that of Ibn Yakub and able, through her own decision, to do either.

Her use of Ibn Yakub as an element of, initially, entertainment, and then as a listening post, is demonstrated by the content - and the conclusion - of their one-sided conversation. Halima relates to Ibn Yakub the story of how she came to be caught in the arms of a man other than her husband, although she fails to acknowledge that Ibn Yakub, too, may have a story. Disgusted and annoyed with his shock at the concept of Halima taking a female lover, she dismisses him, saying "I'm disappointed in you, scribe. I don't think I shall summon you again," (p. 96) indicating that Ibn Yakub's value to her extends only so far as he is capable of being a listener - and not a judger - of her words.

Ibn Yakub treats his wife, Rachel, in a similar capacity to how the Sultan and Halima treat him. His taking of the position of royal scribe had removed him for long periods of time from their home and their daughter, and rather than addressing the problem with their relationship in the fashion that equals in marriage perhaps would, Ibn Yakub instead seems to regularly dismiss her complaints. After he returns home one evening and finds his friend and mentor, Ibn Maymum, fornicating with his wife, neither his mind nor his words turn to what he could have personally done to avert such a terrible thing from happening, or even how he might be partially at fault. Instead, he grows angry with her and Ibn Maymum, assaulting the man and nearly doing the same to his wife. When he comes and looks to her and she says, "You never forgave me for not giving you a son. Was it my fault that after our daughter was born I could never conceive again? You abandoned me for the Sultan and life in the palace. Ibn Maymum became my only source of consolation. I was lonely. Can't you understand?" (p. 155) His response to what should have been a clear indictment of his recent lifestyle was, rather than even vague understanding, was "I was shaken. No reply formed on my lips. I was filled with blind rage and, had I not left the room, would have struck her several blows." (p. 155)

Although his initial, potentially violent reaction is (sort of) understandable, her words provide an insight into their relationship that Ibn Yakub failed to take notice of. Although Ibn Yakub never seemed to mention it, that Rachel failed to provide for him a son - and thereby, in a sense typical to the novel, outlived her usefulness - was a substantial cause of tension in their relationship. Instead of viewing her as an equal, a partner with whom to share struggles and joys and life, he - or at least, how she felt he viewed her - wanted her exclusively for her capacity to bear him a male heir. Failing that, she became nearly useless.

That a person can become useless and ultimately discarded is a concept that also arises repeatedly in The Book of Saladin. One of the most highly-favored of the royal concubines, Jamila, seems to experience this as both a discarded person and a discarder of people. Shortly after arriving in the royal harem, Jamila and Halima became close friends and closer lovers, and the joy the pair brought to one another was seen and commented upon by many characters in the novel. After Halima became heavy with the Sultan's child, however, their relationship changed; seduced by the superstitions of the old women of the harem, she rejected Jamila, both as a friend and lover. That she could allow what appeared to be a fundamentally strong relationship to falter and fail at the words of old women suggests that Jamila had a real and tangible value to Halima - and those values could be found elsewhere and in perhaps greater quality. Halima had replaced Jamila.

This was not to be the last cause of tension between the two characters. Amjad, the personal eununch and servant of Jamila, worshipped his master, saying at one point that "[Jamila] is the only one I love, and I would die happily at her command." (p. 257) This indicates that, even if Jamila personally hadn't intended to objectify the eununch, then he had objected himself to her - he lived and found life on her every word, and seemed to function as little else than pleasing her in any way possible. The above quotation resulted in a conversation that the eununch had with the scribe, Ibn Yakub, about a terrible sort of secret that the eununch had been trying to hide from his master, Jamila - that Halima had been raping him on an almost nightly basis. Shortly after finding this out and learning of the death of Halima, Jamila had the eununch sent away, and explained it in a heartbreakingly-casual fashion; "Amjad? Alas, he is no longer with us. He spread so many calumnies to so many people that I had to ask for him to be sent away. The steward dealt with the matter. Do not look so worried. He is still alive." (p. 322) She discarded him, ironically, in a fashion similar to the way that Halima discarded her - on what were false pretenses, paranoid delusions, and self-damning, blind acts of temper. People that are seen as fellow humans, and not objects with a quantifiable value, should seldom be treated in such a fashion - but objects capable of outliving their value frequently are.

A certain amount of consideration for cultures foreign to my own should be taken, however; the way that my peers treat one another is imagined to be vastly different than the way that peers in the ancient Muslim world would treat one another - particularly those in a militaristic or royal setting. That essentially every character in the novel is guilty of objectification when they can get away with it - except, again, for Shadhi - is troublesome. Were all of the people surrounding Salah al-Din really just miserable bastards? I have a difficult time accepting this, as characters like Shadhi, who treats nearly everyone with the same hyperbolic level of either venom or love, suggest that some of the individuals found in the novel view human beings as creatures worthy of care. This suggests that, instead, Ali has chosen to infuse most of the characters in The Book of Saladin with the capacity for a cold and callous disregard for the emotional and physical needs of others. That this occurs most often with characters dealing with those they might consider subordinates - such as the Sultan Salah al-Din to the scribe Ibn Yakub and the husband Ibn Yakub to the wife Rachel - indicates a certain attitude that Ali may have towards people that inhabit positions of power over others. He perhaps has an innate dislike for people that find themselves in such positions, or has experienced that they view those below them as objects to use as tools and not as individuals to care for.

The singular character that seems to avoid being used as a tool is that of Shadhi; a Kurd, like Salah al-Din and hailing from the mountains, he tends to be less refined and far more callous than the other characters found within Saladin. Shadhi, who taught the Sultan in the ways of war and of life since an early age, is particularly close to the Sultan, and often takes advantage of this by way of both openly mocking any member of the royal court he wishes to, and by having the freedom to do most anything he wants. Both the narrator Ibn Yakub and the Sultan develop a deep affection for the man, and it becomes clear by the time of his death that he is a special case in the kingdom. That Ali chose essentially the most barbaric and uncivilized of characters to be among the few that escape objectification is interesting, suggesting, perhaps, that civilization itself is a corrupting influence. That he is often present at potentially dangerous exchanges – such as Ibn Yakub's first meeting with Halima – is a strange choice. Intrinsically an outsider, the most socially privelaged and unrefined character often finds himself as anything but an outsider. Even if not directly center-stage, Shadhi never misses a performance and is usually just on the periphery, absorbing the input and returning insults. He also seems to be one of few characters that develops a genuine bond with Ibn Yakub, taking special care to ensure he doesn't step on the wrong feet, and appeared to be genuinely sympathetic to the narrator when he found his wife with Ibn Maymun.

Although Shadhi is near all of the positions of power, he seems to wield little of it himself, instead acting as confidant and advisor to his Sultan. That he also fails to systematically objectify all of those around him suggests perhaps an alternate take on motivations – not that those in power abuse personal relationships because they can, but because they must. In order to rule a kingdom effectively a leader must have an effective eye not merely for talent, but for personality – and the capacity to know how to use that personality. In order to solidify their positions as strongly as they can in the harem, Halima and Jamila are forced to abandon people they otherwise might not. This doesn't address Ibn Yakub or Ibn Maymum, however. Neither of them seemed to be particularly interested in jockeying for increased power or social influence, and Ibn Yakub seemed at all times secure in his position. However, that didn't stop him from objectifying one of the few characters beneath him – his wife – and nor did it stop his friend Ibn Maymum from commodizing their friendship by fornicating with Rachel.

Saladin seems to end as a series of objects caught adrift in a storm of jihad and confused spirituality, with the exertions of each object upon another providing the catalyst for conversation and the forwarding of plot. Even the underlying goal of the majority of the book – the Sultan's planned reconquest of Jerusalem and Ibn Yakub's recording of it – is a struggle about attaining objects. Fitting, then, that the novel ends as a series of physical objects, the letters that Ibn Yakub wrote to Ibn Maymun, instead of in the narrative voice that dominated so much of the story.

Major Online Presence

2009-02-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

Major Online Presence assignment. The goal was to examine our field of aspiration's presence on the internets. This paper received an A. A powerpoint presentation goes along with this, but I have no idea how to include that here so fuck off or something.

The breadth and scope of forms of writing found on the Internet are nearly as broad as the Internet itself; poetry, journalism, teenage-angst blogging, and forms of criticism are all prevalent, and are but a few of the possible forms that a writer might present himself on the Internet. Attempting to list, categorize, and actually read all of these poses not merely a daunting task, but an impossible one – even a quick Google search for “writing” returns more than 380 million results.

One of the more prevelant forms of writing on the Internet today is known as blogging. An inherently more social form of writing than has been traditional, both in academia and print/circular, blogging typically invites readers to both comment and to actively engage in the conversation taking place. As my chosen forms of writing is both creative and critical, a small selection of blogs of each type has been selected for examination.

The closest affiliation that I maintain with the creative section of the blogosphere is dedicated to the poetry of a small group of fellow students over Facebook called “Why Don't You Write a Poem About it, Pussy?” Being a closed group, the world at large cannot read the works found within – which is exactly the way that the founder intended it to be. By being isolated from the public, I believe that “Why Don't” provides a unique platform for writers to experiment with forms and ideas that they may otherwise be hesitant to share, and the expression of content that might be viewed with hostility by the outside world. As many of the groups members share their work with the public at a variety of open-mic settings, “Why Don't” also provides a set of experienced speakers and orators that can give advice to some of the younger aspiring poets. This collaboration sometimes extends to group presentations, in which several poets come together to create and ultimately deliver pieces to an audience.

The Readers and Writers Blog serves a similar purpose; to permit aspiring writers, typically unpublished, to come together to hone their craft. Readers are welcome and encouraged to not merely comment on posted items, but to criticize them in an effort to encourage them to produce better pieces. Although the concept of R&W Blog is essentially the same as that of the“Why Don't You” Facebook group, the openness to public discourse shifts the nature of the website and how writing manifests itself. The quantity of works posted to the R&W Blog are immense, and demonstrate the greatest strength of an open writing forum: a gigantic library of posted works, which writers can use both as inspiration and as a guide for their own writing. Although the website has only been around since April 2007, their archives contain several thousand entries, and the variety of writing styles found vastly eclipses that of “Why Don't You.” Although any piece can be commented upon and criticized, the level of response to a specific piece is seemingly random; some poems will receive hundreds of responses, while others receive none. Unfortunately, the community of R&W Blog tends to gravitate towards works that are short, easily-understood, and dealing mostly with upbeat themes like love and sunshine. Abstract, long-form and difficult forms rarely receive the level of attention that easy ones do.

An aspect that I often consider when posting various works to either of these groups is the audience; I must admit that what I post anonymously to the R&W Blog tends to be of a different nature than what I would post to “Why Don't You.” The anonymity of the former allows me to write on concepts that I find difficult to share with those that are close to me, particularly if a work happens to be about one of them, whereas I – and the other posters to the R&W Blog – are free to speak their minds in relative privacy. The other edge of the anonymous sword, however, is that anything posted to “Why Don't You” will never be read by a publisher or a talent scout. While unlikely, the possibility exists that a publisher might read something of particular merit on the R&W Blog and seek to hire the original author. Thus, one of the major functions of publically-open publishing such as through the R&W Blog is that it might actually help your career. It's just a shame that it is less likely to improve my craft, as my work tends to be of a more complex and abstract nature.

While there exists a substantial community for creative writing on the Internet, the financial demand for individuals vested in the field appears to be steadily shrinking. Although writing positions of all kinds have been terminated in recent months, the job availability and security of working for a regular publication is generally better than what could be expected with poetry. It would seem initially that tailoring my education and research into fields that are more likely to reap financial success is, in some small measure, the sale of a slight part of my soul.

Man, however, is not limited to singular passions, and as such the decision to focus on an alternate field – criticism – is one that will not compromise my soul. As my personal preference is gaming journalism, I tend to frequent a small set of blogs dedicated to the craft and have become familiar with both their Internet presence and the communities that have developed around them.

Among the most personally influential is that of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a UK-based PC-gaming blog run by four freelance gaming journalists. Although they don't have a specific focus aside from games based on the PC platform, they write with an intelligence and wit seldom seen in the gaming blogosphere. Often, the entries contain good measures of dry, English humo[u]r while providing thoughtful commentary on the issues they find presented. While the pithy nature of the writing is entertaining and engaging enough to ensure two visits per day, it is the capacity of the four freelancers to examine the larger issues raised by games – whether it comes in the form of strange or clever design decisions, the use of action and environment over dialogue as a method for delivering narration, or the implications of the plethora of recent software piracy studies – that allows for its rapidly-growing audience to proliferate.

Their community consist of two primary sources. The first, which functions similarly to the majority of blogs, is the comment section. A user, whether anonymous or registered, may post a comment after each post. Often this creates a somewhat stilted form of conversation, particularly with controversial topics such as software piracy. While the freelancers of RPS provide ample reason to visit, the level of depth found within their comments community is surprising; the most well-informed, researched and reasoned debates that I've been able to observe on software piracy have occurred there, and each school of thought boasted several software developers providing opinion and insight.

A more recent addition to Rock, Paper, Shotgun is the forum. Although the forum architecture itself is typical, the community is entirely positive. Software developers don't seem to involve themselves in the forum as much as they do the comments section, but the conversations that take place remain productive and thoughtful. Many readers of Rock, Paper, Shotgun appear to be older, and nostalgic thought and archaic reference are common when their influences are felt in modern games.

Although RPS has generated several provocative discussions about piracy, one website – Gamasutra – has generated enormous volumes of conversation on many aspects of gaming. Although most of their content is straight gaming-journalism, often reading like a newspaper, the more interesting features posted focus on the intellectual aspect of gaming. Questions such as, “Are videogames art?”, “Are videogame regulations working?”, and “Do game developers understand visual-floating dot points?” are commonplace, and present to the world-at-large a more intelligent and developed forum for thought and writing about video games than would otherwise be thought by people that spend their lives playing videogames.

In itself, hosting a discussion or posting a feature about a particular issue is nothing special; the primary difference here between Gamasutra and Rock, Paper, Shotgun is that those articles posted on Gamasutra are often linked to throughout the gaming blogosphere – while Rock, Paper, Shotgun is not.

Much of the world still views gaming in general as something for children and for idle minds, and not a real form of either art of media. Since the release of the first Mortal Kombat, games have often been scapegoated for the rise in school violence and moral depravity in general. Blogs such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Gamasutra stand in stark opposition to this, providing a place for intelligently and well-made games to be celebrated, and those that fail to meet the rigors of quality development are panned. Either of these groups are organizations that I personally would enjoy writing for, as I personally – along with many of their regular readers – find that their objectives and methods of delivery are directly in line with my own.

Unfortunately, not every video game blog is pushing the industry as intellectually forward as Gamasutra or RPS. One blog in particular, Kotaku, is notoriously inept and demonstrates everything that is wrong with both video games and their publish manifestations. Although reliable enough for rapidly-deployed news about gaming across all platforms, the various posters of Kotaku have tendencies for not merely self-indulgence, but of outright using their positions as publically-read writers to sway the minds and opinions of readers. Where the function of RPS and Gamasutra is to, generally, provide nearly-objective criticism, commentary and interviews, Kotaku often makes terribly clear its biases and preferences to the reader, forcing them to struggle to adopt their own.

The community that regularly reads Kotaku is almost expected based on their blog entries; where the forum users and entry commentors of RPS tend to be well-written and thoughtful, Kotaku gravitates towards the sentence-long, gut-reaction soundbyte form of public discourse. An argument could be made that Kotaku is even in danger of pushing the industry backwards due to how it handles content; the owner and a regular poster of Kotaku, Brian Crecente, has developed a reputation for ranting and writing irrelevant entries. The many enemies of video games latch onto figures such as Crecente, and assume that, due to his pointed rhetoric, that all gamers are of a similar mindset.

Thankfully, there are writers associated with gaming that aren't incendiary and biased, just as not all gaming websites are dedicated to the intellectual aspects of gaming. The quantity of different writing styles, forms and types on the Internet are as diverse as the Internet itself is – even though a great deal of content is now being delivered via video or music, someone has to write the content surrounding it. As my intended major and profession is a fairly broad goal, it's difficult to select a particular area to focus on as I plan on doing a great many things with my degree.

Voice and Purpose: On Using an Argumentative Method in the Instruction of Composition

2009-02-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

Midterm for Composition Theory. Grade pending. update: grade A.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins maneuvers through a set of theological arguments in an attempt to disprove the Western conception of God. He tries to do this through an examination of a variety of arguments that have been presented over the course of the last century and weaves through biology, philosophy, and even cosmology – all while ensuring that his arguments are easily understood and digestible for a variety of audiences. Regardless of the potential ethical issues that his arguments on this topic may generate, Dawkins' capacity to persuade and illuminate readers on a series of otherwise complex and often abstract arguments is incredibly well-developed. What is it about Dawkins' delivery of prose that allows for the easy consumption and understanding of its message, and how is it that, even though the message is often contentious and antagonistic, it is still able to be understood and not lost in theological misgivings?

Turning quickly to and reading any page found within The God Delusion reveals an aspect of Dawkins' work that exists almost outside of the content found within; always, in every page, in every foot note – even in every section heading – the presence of his distinctive voice is found. It's almost as if he's developed his delivery of non-fiction in the method that a novelist might develop a narrative character, and the impact that is has on the reader cannot be emphasized enough. By allowing for his personality to emerge through the text, he is providing for the reader a face, a consistent voice with which to identify, and this – at least, to me – provides great benefit in the understanding of his words. How is it that he can achieve this, and could this be used as a tool for teaching composition?

By studying writers like Dawkins that manage to effectively convey new and sometimes controversial ideas with clarity and persuasion, students, with the aide of a well-versed instructor, can learn to use his methods of delivery to enhance their own writing. Every act of dialogue with another person, whether they be a peer, superior or subordinate, is ultimately an argument; each of the parties involved has arrived at, even if only slightly, a different truth than those around them. Even when speaking on something as banal as the weather, their interpretations will be different from one another. As argumentation forms a critical component of discourse between any group of individuals, it is of utmost importance that students learn to engage in this style of communication effectively. Every student, from the English major crafting Shakespearean analysis to the business major drafting business proposals, is asserting their own, personal truth, and the effective arguing of that truth is necessary for success in either field. It is therefore important to understand not simply that writers like Dawkins are capable of effective argumentation and persuasion, but how it is that they are effective at it, and how it is that these skills can be developed in students.

In order to understand what it is about Dawkins' work that causes it to be such a worthy example of effective argumentative writing, a pair of components must be examined. The first is that of purpose; without a clear purpose and an understanding of the goals that one hopes to achieve with writing, then the composition is bound for, at best, a lack of comprehension and, at worse, an alienation of the audience. The second aspect is the audience being addressed; who are they? What do they know and believe already, and what are the weaker aspects of their arguments? How can their predispositions be overcome?

These two attributes of The God Delusion leap to the forefront as an explanation of his effectiveness at delivering his personal version of truth: his absolute and clear sense of purpose, and his delivery through a conversational, confrontational tone, which displays an intimate understanding of his audience. His purpose – that of disproving God, or at least arguments that prop Him up to desists around the world – is omnipresent in his style, and every sentence in the work demonstrates this. His conversational tone enables him to easily address issues with his arguments and potential flaws within them, permitting him to address them almost before the reader can raise them. This sort of argumentative, conversational writing is the stuff of human discourse, and provides a platform on which writers can argue the truths that they have come to find – as writing, in the end, is little more than the examination, refutation, or proving of some truth, whether abstract, concrete or whimsical, that a writer may have determined. In Donald Murray's essay “Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product,” he says that, “The students are individuals who must explore the writing process in their own way ... to find their own way to their own truth.” (p. 6) If that truth arises in the way that Murray claims – independently for each student – then some students will have conflicting truths from their peers. The most effective way for students to compare truths and strengthen their own are by way of adopting a style similar to that of Dawkins', so that they can see how to “[use] language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others.” (p. 4)

In order for this style of composition to function, a point of contention must be first decided upon, as there can be no truth without contention. For Dawkins, this was simple: a lot of people believe in God, but he does not, and felt that their believing in God did more harm than good. Points of contention exist everywhere, although depending on the level of education, care should perhaps be taken in subject matter; instructing students to debate the relative merits of atheism or abortion in a Bible-belt state could potentially be grounds for dismissal (especially if the instructor has yet to reach tenure!), but a host of other options exist. Ideally, topics should involve a series of concerns, and the best will involve many, such as economics, ethics, feasibility and so on. Topics should also have relatively rigid lines between standpoints as well. This will encourage – force, even – the student to adopt a strong stance on one side or another, and will hopefully make it easier for the student to carry the same message throughout their compositions.

This speaks to the purpose component of using Dawkins' style in composition, but not the voice – that must come, ultimately, from the student. This can be encouraged and brought to the surface by having students, having already decided on their points of contention, converse with one another about the topic. It is important that they go over most of the components that they will be arguing, as when they finally sit down to begin composing drafts of the written works, they will have a clear audience in mind – their opponent. Although the assignment will call for them to compose it in a fashion that can be read and understood by anyone, by imagining that they are directly addressing a peer, and not just the instructor or the abstract letter grade, it will allow them to write almost as if speaking to an audience.

By speaking to a defined audience, the student will be able to more clearly understand the necessity for making their arguments lucid; if the reader of their words cannot understand them, then they will persuade no one and render the purpose of their composition irrelevant. Because a critical component of the pre-writing process is the development of points of contention with another student, then the students' will have an understanding of what points are important to address in the final composing of their arguments. By engaging in a series of similar assignments, the students will grow to understand not only how to compose confrontational and argumentative essays, but will understand also where the weak points of their arguments lie by having them pointed out by their audience – their peers. In order for the truth that Murray talks about to emerge in the works of students, they must be able to understand how to make their words into truth.

This is best accomplished by an understanding of what makes for a true statement. Although there are certain absolute truths to the world, such as space being super-scary and Mars being mostly red, most students will only rarely make use of these. Instead, they will be developing their own truths and arguing them – only generally, they will be forced to define their audience and their arguments on their own, without the benefit of having each assigned by an instructor. The understanding that absolute truths are nearly nonexistent, and the only truths relevant are those that they learn to construct, becomes increasingly important as they begin to enter the real world. The initial instruction will enable them to understand how such arguments – and truths – are made. Perhaps the most straightforward way to establish an understanding of this before the actual composing process begins is to instruct students to read argumentative works, such as Dawkins' The God Delusion, and discuss how it is that he arrives at and defends his various truths.

Although his logical structures and arguments can be dissected, it is ultimately his creation of truths, through a variety of devices, that allow him to assert himself as effectively as he does. In James Berlin's essay “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories,” he quotes Ann Berthoff as saying, “As a writer, you learn to make words behave the way you want them to .... Learning to write is not a matter of learning rules that govern the use of the semicolon or the names of sentence structures, nor is it a matter of manipulating words; it is a matter of making meanings[.]” (p. 267) This – the making of new meanings and truths – is another key aspect of Dawkins' writing. He uses logic, philosophy, hard scientific data and established theory to establish this truth, and this is apparent in every paragraph found throughout The God Delusion.

For better or worse, an understanding of the mechanical aspects of the language and the forms that it follows is necessary to understand how to make those meanings. These do not necessarily have to be taught traditionally, however, and abstracting the language too far into rules and forms may prove to be detrimental to understanding. By teaching the structural rules alongside the purpose of composition – the development of truth – some of the loss of attention associated with the instruction of grammar-only may be mitigated.

One of the difficulties in teaching subjects such as algebra are the high levels of abstraction necessary to work with the problems. Often, the goal of such problems seems to be arbitrary; although most college students wouldn't struggle with the simple equation “1 + X = 5,” understanding easily that “X = 4,” they likely won't have any idea what X – or the problem as a whole – is meant to represent or accomplish. Teaching problems that seem irrelevant to students will be seen as being irrelevant, and if a problem is irrelevant to a student, then is it really a problem? Is it even worthy of attention? Although the usage of algebra in this context is unfair as the purpose is to teach skills necessary in the understanding of real problems later, such as using trigonometry to measure the optimal angle of the fin on a rocket ship, it demonstrates a problem with teaching skills that are essentially worthless on their own: that, to the students, they are useless, and therefore not worth learning.

So too is it with the instruction of composition; if the purpose of composition is to discover and assert truths, then this should be taught alongside the more technical aspects of composition. By understanding that the rules of the language are in place to facilitate effective communication, and that effective communication is necessary to establish and assert those truths, then the learning of those mechanical rules makes a great deal more sense than if they were taught in a vacuum. Unlike the teaching of basic algebra, which has applications only in mathematics and the sciences, the teaching of argumentation through purpose and voice extends far beyond the confines of the English classroom. Business proposals for executives will be met, at least occasionally, with opposition – and an effective understanding of audience and purpose can help to win those executives to your side by understanding how best to phrase the truths presented to them. Philosophical discourse relies on an understanding of the intricacies of logic and argumentation, but an understanding of your audience will allow you to structure your argument in a fashion that is potentially more palatable than that of your opponent. The political applications of these sorts of skills are limitless, and an understanding of audience is perhaps more important here than in any other field – whether or not you keep, much less get, your job is entirely dependent on this. Every paper and assignment composed in the process of college education will contain an argument – having a solid background (or even one good class) will directly benefit each and every paper.

By developing in students an understanding of how to create, manipulate, and deliver truths, it removes a layer of abstraction from the teaching of composition. Now, the composing of that six-page essay that may have been seen at one point as irrelevant now has real meaning; by creating their own truth, students establish an attachment to each assignment, and the (hopeful) drive to rigorously defend that truth. The letter grade that comes as the final result becomes more than a pass/fail mechanic, or even a “How awesome you are” gradient – it becomes an acceptance and validation of a personal truth from an exterior source, or the refutation and dismantling of an idea held dear by an external source.

Initially emulating the work of writers like Dawkins, first through reading, comprehension and discussion and, ultimately, by applying his methods of persuasion to their own written works, students will develop not only a dialectic style of writing, but an understanding that their method of delivery is equally as important as the content of their work. Although truth can exist in a vacuum for an individual student, they must learn to persuade their audience of their personal vision of truth so that it begins to hold true for the reader as well.

______
Works Cited:
1. Berlin, James. “Contemporary Criticism: The Major Pedagogical Theories.”
Cross-Talk in Comp Theory.Ed. Victor Villanueva. National Council of Teachers of English. 2003. 255-269.
2. Murray, Donald. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory.
Ed. Victor Villanueva. National Council of Teachers of English. 2003. 3-6.
3. Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Bantam Press. 2006.

Step One

2009-01-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

An essay I wrote for a composition theory class concerning my personal methods of how the fuck to write an essay. It got an A.

Step one: ensure you have a hard copy of the assignment in a condition that can be easily read. This is also step two and step three, and is of critical importance – it doesn't matter if there's a copy of it available online, or if you know for a fact that you've got a copy of it sitting in your email. Ensuring that, at the very least, you're capable of beginning work on the assignment is one of the few aspects of writing that shouldn't be procrastinated upon – in my experience, there are few things nearly so terrible as sitting down the night before an eight-page paper is due to write it and realizing that you don't have and cannot access a copy of the actual assignment. During the week leading up to a written assignment of any length, I'm likely to check and make sure I've got the document in my bag at least once each day. This has the added benefit of planting and replanting the raw concept of a due paper into my mind each day, as it's difficult to resist the compulsion to quickly read over the assignment sheet each time it's pulled out. The over-awareness of the looming due date combined with the constant reminder of topic creates an urgency and thought process that I find to be nearly essential in composition.

The second component in my process is the collation of data, whether it be in the form of hard research, stupid anecdotes or critical segments of fiction. This is the first phase where a steno pad becomes critical, both for the recording of relevant quotes and pages numbers, but also as a method of forcefully extracting from my brain ideas and the phrases that they could be used in. I find that hand-writing at least this segment makes for a more natural flow to the prose, and I find it easier to connect and introduce quotations when I can hurriedly sketch out two or three or fifteen versions and see each of them before me. Although this can be done on a computer, automatic formatting and space restrictions limit the amount of digital real estate that you can dedicate to it.

This second area of pre-writing focus is also important as it allows for time specifically devoted to gaining a thorough understanding not only of the various works that will be included in the paper, but how to structure my interpretation of those works in the context of the assignment. Although my interpretations of works, particularly those that fall under the category of fiction, tend to be wild stabs in the dark that occasionally find their mark, I find that it elevates my level of confidence sufficiently so that I can complete the assignment. We'll return to this concept later, but for now self-assuredness is assured.

Thus we, or I, move into the structuralization/development phase of the essay. This is where a series of physical items non-related to the subject matter become critical; cigarettes, an ample supply of coffee, a steno pad, and a Pilot Precise v5 RT (black) ensure comfort and the immediate satisfaction of physical urges that would otherwise drive me away from the craft. The creation of a thesis and major talking points is also established during this period. Although not always succesful, I've found that if I can establish even two or three major ideas to work into the paper then I've already completed half of the work. Generally, the remainder of ideas will be generated during the actual writing process and done electronically.

Sometimes, after the first, black-ink-written draft of the thesis statement is complete, I will immediately jump into typing what will become the sword of the first draft. I'm also prone to, on occasion, write ten to fifteen pages of prose on the steno pad before proceeding to this. I've found that this isn't really something that I can plan and is directly related to my level of confidence with the material at hand – if I know my game well enough, then I can burn through the grunt work of writing the essay quickly, whereas if I am unsure then I can and have spent hours slaving over individual sentences. This phase is also where cheap beer can become hugely beneficial, provided I take care to clean up the style when sobriety returns.

Writing free from a planned structure is a double-edged sword. When I'm sure of what my major ideas are going to be and have them planned out, it becomes a mere matter of filling in the colored lines with the right color of crayon until completion. The unfortunate aspect of the pre-structured essay, for me, is that I have a more difficult time connecting the points together, and I often myself writing three to four sentence paragraphs just to connect the two ideas when a closing sentence should have been sufficient. This issue is entirely sidestepped when the majority of the prose is undecided and is written as the paper develops; the flexibility of being able to place major ideas where I find they integrate the best allows me to write a far more fluid essay than the former method.

I've found that the freehand, write-it-as-you-think-it sort of crafting is more suitable towards essays of this nature which require personal reflection and independent analysis of fiction or poetry. I've also found that the structured approach tends to work more in favor of rigid, data-interpretation-style essays, and those works where the presentation of the right information was more important than the presentation of the right prose.

Throughout the actual hammering process, I will pause after every couple of sentences and after every paragraph and read the previous few lines aloud; I find this to help immensely when determining not only whether or not the sentence works, but also for the tone that it conveys. Too snarky, too ambiguous, too elitist? I have a tendency to glaze entirely over accidental tone shifts when merely reading, and speaking the words aloud helps me to identify problem areas and correct them.

After the bulk of the essay is completed (which may or may not include the introductory paragraph – it can be a personal wild card for me when I find that I'm prepared to write this), I read over it twice in it's entirely, correcting grammatical and structural errors while attempting to clean up the prose. After this, I find something else to occupy my mind for a short while. This is inevitably one violent video game or another, and the pulverization of digital people into digital bloody pulp provides exactly the sort of release that I need to focus on the final, and arguably most challenging, part of the essay: reading through the damn thing again and again until enough errors are repaired to convince myself that there is little more than can be done with it.

Which is exactly when it gets printed, another cigarette lit, and read again. After I've decided that I'm content with essay, I complete my final adjustments and begin formatting. Since high school, I've preferred to save this part of the craft for last. I despise the way that double-spaced typing appears and find that formatting as I write distracts me, and I've come to enjoy the final formatting process – it feels like finally striking the death blow on an internet dragon, and it's almost as rewarding.

At a certain point during this process, music becomes integral, and must come in the form of enclosed-style studio headphones. Typically, the draft stages tend to have music focused around a beat and certain varieties of hip hop work excellently for this; for example, the initial writing process of this essay was done to Viktor Vaughn's Vaudeville Villain. As the essay developed and my typing grew quicker and more confident, the music changed into the substantially more aggressive and suitable death-metal stylings of Wolfchant. This path is rarely deviated from; although the bands change, the tempo and type of music rarely does. Slow, steady music is excellent for laying down foundations and creating bricks, whereas purposefully angry and fast music is great for essentially filling up space. The other wonderful function that it serves is a bolster of confidence; it's quite easy for me to lose steam midway if I've got nothing to listen to, but by allowing myself to get heavily into the music keeps my spirits quite high. This is high point is, of course, completely destroyed when I decide that the paper is complete and submit it for grading, but I've yet to find anything that can allay that trauma.

Drug Addicts, Con-Artists, Thieves and Liars: The Modern Writer

2009-01-30T16:51:00.000-08:00

Essay I wrote for a composition class concerning the mass-media representations of writers-at-large. It got an A.

Drug Addicts, Con-Artists, Thieves and Liars: The Modern Writer

Every word an implement in a vicious, pitched battle, chosen carefully and placed optimally to ensure optimal effectiveness, I write not to establish concept but rather defend idea and notion. The front is ever-present and watchful – the mind and mentality of the audience, accepting for nothing as given, is a force that must be compelled in one direction over another. I find few things so engrossing and entertaining as the persuasion of other people through the written word, and it is by the road of the written word that I intend to make my career. There are multiple paths to achieve this end, and, with that in mind, I chose five films that I felt effectively demonstrated five separate branches of my chosen road.

Although Nick Naylor, the central character of Thank You for Smoking, spends little time either composing or delivering pre-written speeches, his career is entirely focused on the persuasion of targeted groups of people. As the Vice President and chief spokesperson of the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a special interest group whose mission it is to determine whether or not a link exists between cigarette smoke and lung cancer and funded by large tobacco businesses, it is his job to ensure that the public gets the “correct” information that cigarettes are perfectly safe. Regardless of the quality of the information or the methods by which it's presented against him, Naylor is able to effectively spin the story so that it directly benefits the cause of his company instead of damaging it. Slick, crafty and clever, Naylor – and his job function – appear to be nearly as beloved as they are despised. That what appear to be one of the most gifted rhetoricians of the world in which Thank You for Smoking takes place works for a blatantly evil corporation speaks to common misconceptions that the real world has about those that can cleverly tell lies and twist words into distorted half-truths; slippery at best and morally bankrupt at worse, lawyers, politicians and charismatic businessmen are viewed with a healthy skepticism.

Thank You also tends to emphasize the masculinity of the position. Naylor's closest friends, both male and in the employment of equally evil companies, are chauvinistic. The female counterpart to the fast-talking Naylor is Heather Holloway, who plays a reporter that's actively working to achieve a fair story of the chief spokesperson. In order to manipulate her way into as much information as possible from Naylor, she begins to sleep with him, suggesting that she couldn't intellectually compel him to provide it – suggesting, even, that her most effective weapon, perhaps as a woman, was not how bloody clever she could be but rather that she had no issue with objectifying her body. Although the film doesn't otherwise actively suggest that women are inferior to men in this capacity, it's important to note that charismatic business people, politicians and lawyers are predominantly male.

While exhibiting his characteristic crazed and somehow ultra-lucid charisma, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was credited with the invention of gonzo journalism, which can best be described as entirely subjective, ground-level journalism. The biopic Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson tells the story of the development of his craft, and follows him through encounters with Hell's Angels, the infamous California-based biker gang, the lead up to the 1972 election, and a series of sports reporting for Rolling Stone. Abandoning objectivity long before he began being published, Thompson wrote with clear intention in mind, tailoring his word choices and structure to convey specific ideas and influence his audience. Although his credibility as a reporter was questionable at best, his ability to persuade, argue and write his way into the minds of his readers was and is striking. Thompson, however, did little to allay a common conception of the writer; drug-addled, anti-authoritative, and only occasionally coherent, he displayed to the world the raving voice of a lunatic. This, coupled with other Beatnik-era writers from the previous decades like William S. Burroughs, created the popular image of the ink-stained and half-crazed author.

Jack Torrance of The Shining amplified the level of madness portrayed by Thompson tenfold; not content to merely be eclectic and outspoken, Jack Nicholson's character instead becomes completely delusional and, by film's end, filled with an incredible and murderous rage. Trapped inside of what seems to be a haunted luxury hotel for an extended winter with no company aside from his (boring and whiny) family and nothing to do but work on his novel, Jack Torrance goes completely batshit insane. His madness culminates in the last segment of the film, as his wife, Wendy, finds the manuscript that he's been slaving over for months. Instead of words, she finds a mantra, repeated in various formats throughout the manuscript, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Following this is the infamous scene in which Nicholson hacks down the bedroom door with his axe and growls, “Heeeeere's Johnny!”

For better or worse, the vast majority of writers don't go insane. At least, not homicidally insane – some, like Steven King, might write about killing people a great deal, but it's rare that they actually start doing so. Just the same, the notion of a writer dealing with cabin fever and severe writer's block tends to be slightly creepy and being around a writer in this state is understandably off-putting to just about anybody. Writer's block has become nearly synonymous with the creative writer, especially in film and television. It's a bizarre occurrence when an author found in the media is actually producing something, and this tends to be flatly contradictory to people in that field in real life. Writer's block can be a terrible thing, but the majority of novelists and poets have long-since established methods of breaking blocks and even avoiding them entirely.

A young Will Shakespeare, working on the comedy-turned-tragedy that will soon by Romeo and Juliet, begins Shakespeare in Love in a similar situation to Jack Torrance. It is not so much the crazy-murdering-psychopath aspect, but very much the writer's-block – at least, until he meets the cleverly named Viola de Lesseps, whom he quickly falls in love with. As a result of this love, the young Shakespeare is overcome with inspiration and begins to work feverishly on what will become one of his most widely-known works. The young Shakespeare, characterized by idle daydreaming and easily overcome by idealism, represents another key aspect of the craft - the poet - the writer dedicated to ensuring that not only should language convey ideas and sway minds, but also that it should be beautiful.

Although Will fits the mold of the archetypal poet, actual generalizations of poets tend to be somewhat inaccurate due to their wildly varying nature in real life. From personal experience alone, I've encountered the typical melancholy, somber-always-serious sorts, the happy-go-lucky and painfully chipper ones, and the professional, pretentious and ever-sort-of-smiling folks. The universal truth to media representations of writers, particularly creative ones, is the universal fun made of them; irrelevant and antiquated relics of a dead age, they often bear the brunt of jokes directed at English majors. Except for the now-clichéd question asked of all English majors: “What in the world are you going to do with an English degree, lol?” The greatest inaccuracy of Shakespeare in Love's presentation of this archetype is that it actually gets an audience.

While poets in popular culture have the tendency to be seen as pointless, another field of writing receives nearly as much mocking; that of the critic. The possibly-unfortunate truth of the role of the critic, however, is that of audience; typically reaching, in a modern setting, far more people than the poets, critics often end up being outright despised by far greater numbers than creative types. As it turns out, people generally don't like being told that their work, whether it be in film, music, theater or gaming, sucks, and fans of those works don't particularly enjoy being told that their beloved Twilight sucks. In the animated television show The Critic, Jon Lovitz provides the voice – and more than a little personality – for Jay Sherman, “New York's third most popular early-morning cable-TV film critic." 1 Jay represents the film/art-elitist critic that people read even though they despise; even his physical bearing, diminutive and unattractive, is unpleasant. Unfortunately, Jay also demonstrates that terrible aspect of criticism in which nothing is analyzed and gut reaction is his only guide; “It stinks!” is not a criticism of the movie, it's a bland statement of opinion with no support structure behind it – it's worthless. Although there are certainly critics that fall into the oversimplification camp, there are yet still many that will spend five hundred words examining the peculiarities of the cinematography of the film. While some people enjoy archaic and off-kilter references, ivory-tower elitism, and the evisceration of works of poor quality, others tend to absolutely despise these.

Jay Sherman, as is typical with media representations of critics, is a male – so too are the journalist, novelist, playwriter, and PR-thug - and it's little wonder; in a world that is dominated by male figures, it comes as little surprise that the general idea of a writer in American culture is almost ever-masculine, particularly when that writing is conducted on the public and/or professional level. Films like Thank You for Smoking do little to alter this stereotype, placing women almost entirely in either subordinate or sexually subversive positions, reinforcing the illusion that men are best suited towards that line of work, and even suggesting that in order for women to attain positions of power and prestige as writers of any kind they must sacrifice their dignity. Although Viola de Lesseps from Shakespeare in Love was absolutely integral to the formation of Will's masterwork, she finds herself in a position approximating that of Heather Halloway in Thank You for Smoking – inspirational and critical to the creation of the work, but never directly involved in the final project and entirely subordinate to Will and his whims. Wendy Torrance plays essentially the same part in The Shining – although her subordinate/inspirational position is labeled as mother/caretaker/loving wife, it serves the same purpose as that of the other leading females mentioned.

Unfortunately, the trend in film to favor the creative prowess of men over women seems to be at least partially reflected in aspects of real-life writing and rhetoric. As mentioned earlier, the majority of publically seen politicians and lawyers are male. Certain genres of literature, particularly that of science fiction, tend to be the near-exclusive domain of men, and although there appear to be more male than female authors in general when perusing the shelves of a local bookstore, the disparity between the two is perhaps not as extreme as tends to be suggested in the media. According to the Borders website, of the 10 best books of 2008 according to “The New York Times Book Review,” three were published by women.2

Representations of writers and speakers in the media tend to be both damned and praised. Will in Shakespeare in Love is a heavily-romanticized image of a playwright/poet; dark, tall, and irresistibly attractive to the women present in the film, he approaches, appropriately, the archetypal bard, able to enchant and delight audiences with little more than the words of his mouth and a sly smile. The slick and clever character of Nick Naylor is impossibly quick on his mind, able to deflect the harshest and most damning criticism of his organization and cite obscure studies without breaking his roguish grin. The true-to-life picture of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson painted by Gonzo is often anything but glamorous, and often seems to be making a caricature of the writer and dissident – the heavy drug use and rampant alcoholism would suggest, to most people, an incapacity to function on any workable level, but Thompson manages with a gritty and half-delirious determination.

Writers tend to be a pretty varied group of people – and only seldomly do they meet the standards of the media. Many of them, particularly the creative types, tend to be tortured sorts, seeming to thrive on misery and trouble. Even on the campus of this school there are dramatically controversial and outspoken members of the press, exhibiting (if they weren't arguing in favor of the status quo) an anti-authoritarian and independent attitude in both writing and personality.

Due to what seems to be an inherent, random quirkiness of personality that comes from the capacity to write well, it’s fairly easy to satirize writers. Due to the broad spectrum, racially and economically, of poets, novelists, essayists and academics, they tend to be a fairly diverse crowd – it's a pretty safe bet that if you throw a knife into the crowd, you're fairly likely to hit somebody with a joke. NPR shows, particularly those on the weekends, seem to delight in poking fun at the field, presumably because a great many of the broadcasters and radio personalities went to school for English and inexplicably found themselves working in public radio. My personal favorite comes from Prairie Home Companion in a recurring skit called P.O.E.M. (Professional Organization of English Majors), where Garrison Kiellor pokes fun at various aspects of the field and all of the futility contained therein.

In personal experience, the writer/rhetorician position as portrayed in the media tends to be more romanticized than anything else. Due to a conflict of interest – that being that pretty much everything seen via the mass media was written by writers – it's difficult to determine if the field gets the same sort of treatment, whether positive or negative, as other fields. Over the next decade, we're likely to see a spat of films with villainous Wall Street executives cruelly gambling away pensions and football players running illegal dogfighting rings. But writing a series of controversial plays, pissing off the royalty, contracting syphilis and engaging in a spectacularly hedonistic lifestyle? Fairly likely, even if it was already done in Libertine. Are we likely to see a film that actively damns a writer, painting him in realistic and negative terms and not fetishizing his drug use and disregard for authority? Citing artificial sources in the New York Times? As unlikely as Hunter Thompson dying a natural death.

Solstice

2008-12-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

It was foolish to think that
somehow today would be different
Foolish to think that though
the dreams came from a
golden, hopeful today,
they would influence,
of all days, today,
winter solstice

Blades of Grass

2008-12-12T22:03:00.000-08:00

Today, I found this on refrigerator that I will never see again:

Every blade of
grass has its
angel that bends
over it and whispers,
"Grow, grow."
-The Talmud

There are a great many thoughts I have concerning this, but they are both unwarranted and unwanted. Nonetheless, I feel the quotation expresses a certain sentimentality than I could otherwise.

Snowmen for a Nuclear Winter

2008-12-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

_____________________________________

Snowmen for a Nuclear Winter!

I made these with an old girlfriend, and were originally going to be Christmas gifts for my family. However, I tried to make them, oh, the day before, and thus sat unpainted or completed in my parent's basement for a year. I decided that, since my dear friend Susan had a birthday coming up, I'd not merely complete them, but completely change the dynamic - what were once sick and dying snowmen .. are now irradiated and damned snowmen! Although I didn't get the best quality of pictures (parents basement does not an ideal studio make), rest assured they are all capable of freely standing. Except for the poor one that got speared. More pictures beneath the cut.

annnnnd .. these are the rest of them:

The Debate: Part 1 - Affirmative Opening

2008-12-04T11:54:00.001-08:00

This is the debate thread I had to respond to for my final in a class this semester. My response is in the next post, the Negation Opening.
From Alex Gromak

The issue of online piracy, specifically illegally downloading music, is a topic that has been given a lot of attention in the past decade (Note, I will be focusing on the issue of downloading music, although this can be extended to all forms of digital media). Most of this discussion has been one side arguing that downloading music is not illegal, while the opposing side argues that it is. In actuality, downloading music online, commonly through p2p clients, is illegal. The question is: should it be? In this essay, I will show why the current laws that make downloading music illegal are flawed, and how the efforts to eliminate this issue are not effective. In doing so I will argue that we need a new, more accurate definition of Internet piracy and that the laws must be changed to better suit the issue at hand. Finally, I will demonstrate why organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who hunt down and prosecute illegal music downloaders, are not working, in any sense, to solve this problem; not to mention the possibility that their own efforts to find illegal downloaders may be illegal, and their results unethical.

To begin, let’s look at some ways in which the current laws that deem music downloading to be illegal are flawed. Roy Furchgott, in The International Herald Tribune, on September 4th of 2008 explains that in the United States, a case pitting Sony Corporation of America against Universal City Studios, known as “The Betamax case” allows people to record CDs to their iPods. Furchgott summed up the case’s outcome by saying, “essentially, the ruling said people could record copyrighted material for personal, noncommercial use.” First of all, “noncommercial use” makes it sound like as long as you are not selling what you copy from the CD, you can do whatever you want with it. Which would include sharing it online using p2p clients. This obviously is not the case, but it does sound like that would follow. In any case, Furchgott then makes an astute point; one that I completely agree with and believe is the strongest point against the nature of these laws: “Suppose you have a vinyl record and you want to hear it on your iPod. Does the recording have to come from your own album, or can you download a copy? […] After all, you have paid for the right to hear the song; does it matter where your specific copy comes from?” In this situation, if you download the song, the means by which you acquire the song is illegal. But you have already paid for the same exact song. Why does it matter how you acquire it if you have bought it? This moves the issue of legality solely to the means by which it was acquired, with no attention being made to whether or not it was purchased. This seems absurd. Why should it be legal to find and utilize the equipment to record a digital version from your own copy of the vinyl but illegal for you to simply download the same album that has already been digitalized? Either way, you have done the same two things: (1) you have bought the album, and (2) you have it digitally. Why should it matter how you manage to get the digital version, if you have already bought it? I argue that it doesn’t and that it shouldn’t.

You can imagine a similar dilemma with a collectible. Lets say I buy a limited edition collectible version of an album. I want to keep it sealed in the plastic since collectibles are always worth more if kept in mint condition. So I have legitimately bought this album. But how can I get the songs if I don’t open it? Why should it be illegal to download this album since I already bought it? Again, this goes back to the method of how it is acquired, it has nothing to do with theft, which is what this issue is supposed to be all about. If I were to ask: what is the main issue with online piracy? Presumably the answer would be something along the lines of: obtaining some digital media without paying for it. Essentially, online piracy equals online theft. But if I have bought the album, and I am legally allowed to copy it for personal use, how can I be stealing it by downloading it? Stealing implies I have not bought it, but I have bought it. This is a fundamental problem with the current definition of online piracy.

I will now show that the RIAA’s involvement in this issue is at times illegal, in some cases unethical, and is absolutely ineffective; therefore establishing that a new method of dealing with online piracy is needed. Before addressing the unlawful/unethical aspects, let us simply look at the common methods the RIAA use. According to Times Staff Writer Jay Cridlin, on March 19th 2007, the letters they send out to the accused music thieves threaten a lawsuit fining them at the cost of $750 per song. To avoid this, they are asked to settle for a sum of reportedly around $4,000. Their tactics have been regarded by critics as nothing but bullying. As Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “That’s exactly the intent of it: 'Pay early, pay quickly and make this campaign easy for us, rather than fighting back.”
So where does all this money the RIAA is getting go? To the artists or record labels of the “stolen” songs? No. It goes into the RIAA’s funds for more downloader hunting. Since all the money accumulated by the RIAA goes right back into the RIAA’s pocket to enable them to hunt for more illegal downloaders, the only purpose this could be seeking to achieve is deterrence. If the goal were to give the money back to the deserving artists or record companies that are losing out from online piracy, the money the RIAA acquires should go back to them. But because it doesn’t, the RIAA’s goal must not be designed to reimburse those who are suffering from illegal music downloads, namely the artists and record companies. Therefore the RIAA’s actions serve merely as a deterrent against others downloading music illegally. As I will show later on, this deterrence is not working either, and thus, the efforts of the RIAA are a complete failure.

Now lets move on to address some ways the RIAA has acted unlawfully and unethically. Simon Hayes of The Australian, on November 7th 2006 said “Music and software industry lobby groups have been accused of touting ''absurd'' piracy figures in an effort to get tougher copyright laws and more police resources to enforce them.” On July 5th 2007, TECHWEB stated that the target of a music file-sharing lawsuit was fighting back, claiming that the investigation tactics used were illegal. “Court documents claim that the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit ‘agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign. On information and belief, the private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation. Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.” Chris Ayres of The London Times, wrote on October 5th of 2007 about a specific lawsuit case dealing with illegally downloading music. He states, “A single mother from Minnesota was last night fined $222,000 - about five times her annual salary -for swapping music on the internet…The verdict means that Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old Native American, will be ordered to pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs…that she shared illegally. The fine will almost certainly go uncollected and is expected to drive Ms. Thomas, who has two children, into bankruptcy.” Ok, illegally downloading music is bad. Fine, but how can one justify putting this woman and her two children into bankruptcy as a result of it? What kind of life are these two young children going to have as a result of this? You may think this is an Appeal to Pity but in order for me to be committing such a fallacy, my argument must be founded solely on the appeal to your pity for the woman, and specifically, her two children. But I do not believe I am doing so. My argument lies in the fact that it is unjustifiable to cast a woman into bankruptcy for something as trivial as sharing music online. The impact it has on her and her children acts only to show the ridiculousness of what results from the current online piracy laws.

I will now show that the efforts of the RIAA have not even served as a deterrent for online music downloading and therefore certainly have not been effective in stopping it altogether. David George-Cosh, of The Globe and Mail in Canada reported on July 31st 2007 that the “fourth annual Digital Music Survey, which polled 1,700 people in the U.K., suggests that illegal music is more popular than ever before, with 43 per cent of respondents claiming that they are illegally downloading tracks, up from 36 per cent last year and from 40 per cent in 2005. This year, only 33 per cent said the risk of being prosecuted was enough of a deterrent to stop them from downloading unauthorized tracks, compared with 42 per cent in 2006. The findings also show that 18 per cent - nearly one in five respondents - said they planned on downloading more illegal music, up from 8 per cent in 2006.” Even the RIAA has admitted their efforts are not working. Chris Ayres of The Australian, said on October 5th 2007, “According to the RIAA, the number of households that have downloaded music with file-sharing software has risen from 6.9 million in April 2003 to 7.8 million in March [of 2007]…Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property at civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says ‘the RIAA’s legal campaign is having little effect.’”
On July 28th 2007, Fred Reed of The Washington Times compared the music industry’s campaign against illegal downloading to the war on drugs, calling it “a permanent and unwinnable struggle.” He then says, “The war isn’t working. It isn’t working partly because it is so very easy to download or copy digital material. And it isn’t working partly because the public doesn’t care. During Prohibition, illegal drinking was common and accepted, except by law enforcement. Today, countless respectable people smoke marijuana, and only cops care. And no one cares about music downloads except the RIAA. It is very nearly impossible to enforce a law without the support of the population.” He then asks, “thirty years from now will the RIAA still be suing people right and left in a desperate attempt to stop the unstoppable? It is probably not a good thing to have laws that are both unenforceable and widely ignored. The alternative is to come up with a way of managing copyright and royalties that recognizes reality.”

This is similar to what Barrie McKenna of The Globe and Mail in Canada said on August 28th 2007: “For years, the recording industry focused almost exclusively on trying to stamp out piracy by suppressing demand through lawsuits…The industry’s dilemma might be a lot more manageable today if it hadn’t been so late to embrace digital music as the innovation that it is, rather than a threat to be thwarted at every turn.”

I have now shown how the current laws dealing with downloading music are flawed in that they deal more with the method of acquiring music rather than the theft of music. I have also shown that the efforts put forth by the RIAA are not only at times illegal and unethical, but they just simply are not solving the problem. We need a new system; one that provides us with a new way of understanding and defining this issue that is a better and more accurate account of what we really mean by saying “online piracy” along with new laws to abide by this new definition.

My plan consists of redefining the term piracy so that it applies only to what we actually mean when we use the term as well as developing a new system for the digital media world to replace the RIAA. At the very least, I propose new laws to change the definition of piracy to read that downloading or copying (provided it is for personal use only) music, or any other kind of digital media, is to be considered “piracy” only if such media has not already been purchased by the downloader. The ultimate however, would be to legalize file sharing all together (as I will address below).

As for alternatives to the RIAA, more organizations like Creative Commons (a non-profit organization working to expand the range of digital media that is available for others to legally build upon and to share with other) need to be implemented and more organizations compelled to work with such companies in order to increase the legality of file sharing. Obviously legalizing file sharing all together will eliminate the unwinnable war the RIAA has tried to fight. This would also do away with a need for such an organization as the RIAA altogether. However the question remains, how will the artists get their compensation? Well, first of all, as I addressed above, their not getting it now since none of the proceeds the RIAA gets goes back to the artists, labels, or record companies. But besides that, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the leading civil liberties group defending people’s rights in dealing with digital materials) has suggested, if we legalize file sharing, we could compensate the artists, labels, and record companies by implementing a surplus in internet service provider fees. Indeed, forcing these solutions is not only the best solution against such an unwinnable/unstoppable war, it is the only solution, unless we want to keep things the way they are.

The agent for implementing these changes will be the World Trade Organization. Funding will be minimal since the changes only involve creating new laws to replace the old ones defining Internet piracy and/or determining the legality of downloading altogether. These plans will clearly fix the problems since they all deal with definitional problems. The laws currently result in inconsistencies with what we mean when we correlate the term “stealing” with the word “piracy.” Therefore, changing the laws as I have described will result in the disappearance of such inconsistencies; problem solved. Also, if file sharing were to be legalized completely, then the problems being raised as a result of the RIAA would also disappear because such an organization would no longer be needed. Also, if the Internet service provider fees were increased to account for the compensation of the artists being “harmed” from downloaded music, this would dismiss the issue that the artists are loosing money from the legalization of downloading. Again, problem solved.

Even if only the new laws defining piracy are implemented, this will still result in advantages. By changing the way we define piracy as I have stated above, we can focus on what we are really concerned with when it comes to internet piracy: theft. Right now, the focus is simply: anything you download is illegal. Under my plan, downloading when you have already bought the content will not be illegal. This will allow the officials to focus on those who are truly stealing what they download. If we legalize file sharing all together, we obviously have much more freedom when it comes to what we have legal access to on the Internet. My plan also accommodates for compensating those who are losing money as a result of the way things are now. All in all, this plan fixes the problem the whole “file sharing is illegal” debacle at the root of its true causes.

My response to Affirmative Opening

The Debate: Part 2 - Negation Opening

2008-12-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

My response.
It's easy to imagine that the methods of dealing with Internet piracy should come down to villains and heroes, evil umbrella corporations and those that fight them. But it doesn't work out so simply; it's easy to call the RIAA an evil company, failing and backwards in both their methods and operational philosophy. To simply say that the RIAA should be bypassed as a way of dealing with music piracy isn't going to be effective; although their process of hunting down and prosecuting individual downloaders is clearly not working, the RIAA must have a direct hand in any new methods implementing – the record producers trust them and, according to their website, www.riaa.com, 90% of all recorded American music is done through them. What must be done, instead, is a complete reworking of the functionality that the RIAA themselves have. As they represent the almost the entirety of the music industry legally, they simply can't be left out of any equation.

Instead of changing the terminology of laws – which is a dangerous idea that I will return to shortly – it would be better to provide incentive for consumers to not break laws. It's easy to say that because a law is difficult to enforce or police that it should be changed or renamed. However, the music industry – and the producers of IP, or intellectual property, the legal terminology for such things – deserves to have the integrity of their work preserved, just like a bread baker in a city.

Changing the laws so that they merely re-brand illegal downloading of music to something different is a poor idea. This is for two reasons;
1.The name that something or some person has, especially when it's a title, can have a powerful impact on a person. Take in example the words “freedom fighter” and “terrorist”. Although they technically mean the same thing, people will react dramatically differently to them when they encounter them – if a local citizen perceives a gun-toting young man as a freedom fighter, they are dramatically more likely to help them, as they have real gains to be made should the young man be successful. But what if they recognize them as a “terrorist”? This becomes much more gray, as the word “terrorist” implies the destruction of public, non-governmental structures and acts of violence, and most citizens would be far less likely to aid them. Unless, of course, they were scared for their lives, but we're speaking on motivations to make decisions freely.
2.It won't necessarily change anything. Changing the title of an action to disguise its criminality isn't going to make it have less of an impact on the music industry, or other individuals – like the artists themselves – that music theft can have. What will happen is that it will encourage more people to download illegally because, well, it doesn't sound like it's so bad – it's not piracy, after all. Currently, one of the focuses in the war on drugs is to create awareness among people that drugs are incredibly dangerous to take. So too with the anti-piracy campaign – it's trying to be demonstrated to the public that piracy does real damage and has real consequences. Rebranding piracy to something that makes it easier to handle on one's conscience is only going to make things worse.

I suggest instead that the shift on anti-piracy comes not from the consumers or the law, but instead from the producers of IP themselves. In order for the populace to stop downloading freely – which is something incredibly difficult to both track and police – they must be provided with not merely alternate, legal choices, but better alternate choices.

The example given of downloading a CD of an enclosed vinyl album after purchasing it is an interesting one, because this is exactly where the music industry should come in. The following is a series of proposals that, were they followed, would not only decrease piracy, but greatly increase profits.
1.Record companies ought to (and most of them do – services like iTunes demonstrate this) have the entirety of their music collection online and available, and given certain parameters, consumers should have free access to it.
2.When a customer purchases a CD or song, whether online or off, they should do so with a registration key of some sort – whether a username, unique ID or email address – and they should then be able to use this access to freely download another copy of the same song at any time, so long as the record company remains in business.
3.Record companies must work actively to develop products that are simply better than those that are pirated; Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney recently admitted to the website www.paidcontent.org that “piracy is a business model” and that “it exists to serve a need in the market”. This is the exact sort of acknowledgment needed by the IP industry as a whole, as it allows for solutions such as 3. to function. In providing lifetime downloading access to previously paid-for tracks, (something iTunes does currently) providing higher quality audio than those found on pirated sites (325kbps vs 128kbps – a dramatic difference in quality), offering full, digital sleeve notes, interviews with the bands, etc for the same price – then they will have a product that is categorically better than that of the pirated version.

Will consumers spend more money for a better product? Twentieth Century Fox thinks so; in China, DVD piracy is a rampant issue, and although most companies have been attempting to force the law to do their bidding, Fox had a better idea; produce a series of high-quality official DVDs, and sell them for about 2$. They aren't making nearly as much money as they would be if those people were buying the 10-15$ DVDs, but they're still turning a profit from it. Even though the discs are double the street value of the pirated version, they're still being purchased by the consumer – as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The primary difficulty with the suggestion that downloading copies of the same music after you've already purchased it should be legal – or rebranded alternatively – is that you're not downloading the same copy. If we're talking about analogue vinyl's, then, according to hydrogenaudio.org on July 15 2005, the bitrate – or audio quality – on a vinyl is around 650kbps, and that of a CD is 1378 kbps. Double the quality – how, if two things are exactly the same, can one of them be twice the quality of another?

You bought the vinyl, and the rights to that – you did not buy the 1378 kbps quality version that you got from the website, you did not purchase the rights to the CD cover art (which often accompany pirated music), and you did not purchase the rights to distribute it – which is probably what you're doing if you let your p2p client remain at default settings. When you purchased the vinyl, you had every right to use it for noncommercial use – but you didn't purchase the rights to every version of it every recorded. Although it's something of a slippery slope, I feel it should be considered: if you bought the rights to, say, Radiohead's “The Bends” (the single), should you receive rights to versions of it played live, old versions that didn't make the actual album? No, most people would correctly argue – and it's the same for what are perceived duplicates of the media on the internet.

The other massive difficulty with illegally downloading files that you may have already purchased is the method by which you're getting them – and yes, it does matter. Just because it was that drug dealer down the street that stole the television and sold it to you doesn't mean that you're not directly involved with the theft, and it's similar with music piracy. We'll even assume that you're not using a torrent site which are currently the fastest and most effective way to pirate music – but we won't assume this because they force the user to also upload their files (illegally). So we'll use the example of a standard p2p client, like Kazaa or Limewire, to preserve the relative legality of what we're doing. The trouble is .. if you load up any of these services, or go to their websites, then you're providing hits on their advertisements. Although you're not directly handing the pirates money, you're indirectly providing it for them – and by using their service, you're also endorsing their actions and those of everyone else using the service illegally, and are therefore becoming a part of it yourself.

How you get your music does matter, although it's a given that the methods by which you procure it should change. Again, if the record industries, instead of legal entities, presided over these events with profitability in mind and not the destruction of individuals, then this would not be nearly the problem that it is today. Providing money to a drug dealer for stolen goods, whether they are illegal or not, is still aiding and abetting theft – just like downloading a file that you might legally already own that was illegally produced is still, and should be still, considered illegal.

The Washington Times article cited suggests and directly states that, “...no one cares about music downloads except the RIAA” simply is not true. Although the band Metallica were perhaps overzealous in their charges and rabid in the pursuit of .. justice, they nonetheless publicly spoke out against Napster, an early p2p file-sharing application, at the 1997 MTV Music Video Awards, arguing that they were directly losing money because of the theft of their music online – demonstrating that, regardless of the actual impact that the downloading was having financially on them, they were still upset. Most people would argue that Metallica isn't exactly a “no one” in the music industry.

Although putting an additional service access fee onto the ever-rising cost of high-speed internet is an interesting solution, it isn't a fair one, although it's exactly what Jim Griffin and Warner Music are going to attempt to do (as pulled from www.portfolio.com). Why isn't it fair? Because not everyone will be using the service, or will want to have digital access to music. It also doesn't guarantee that the actual artists will receive the money any more than current contracts allow for. If this were an opt-in sort of tax that allowed you unlimited access to whatever music you wanted (provided your label had it online and the music you wanted was available and not something archaic and weird), then many people would simply choose to not opt-in and would continue pirating; why pay for a service that offers not only nothing better than the illegal market, but offers even less?

Again, the solution must come from the record companies themselves. Similar to how the only way to win the drug war is to convince people to not use narcotics of their own free will – instead of pouring billions of wasted dollars into South-American countries fruitlessly – the only way to win the war against piracy will be to convince consumers that it is in their best interest to actually pay for things. This means things like unlimited access to things you've already purchased, free updates and support for software, and extra features not available to pirated versions. Valve, the company behind the tremendously popular Half-Life series, already does this with games through a service called Steam. Steam is entirely free to download and use, and provides social networking and matchmaking for games. It also has the widest selection of digital games on the internet – and it sells a lot of them. If you ever move, or get a new computer, or have any number of things happen to your copy of a downloaded game, you can always simply re-download it. Irritating? Maybe. But not as much as having to either go to the store or deal with pirate sites to get a new copy if you don't want to pay for it again. They also offer patches, support, free multiplayer – and they're making money with it.

One of the other things that Valve does is force all of their games to communicate with the “home server” in order to be played – if you want to play the single-player version of Half-Life 2, you still must have an internet connection. Although frustrating on occasion, the otherwise convenience of the service more than makes up for it. This can happen with music and movies, too – with the ubiquity of wifi access, it will be a short few years before every music-capable device can access the internet at any time. Using services like these – called DRM, or Digital Rights Management – allows companies to track and secure their product at any given time.

Through a combination of non-intrusive DRM and high consumer viability, the IP industry can combat piracy by outright winning the war; because it's just so easy to download IP and so difficult to stop, alternate methods must be decided upon. Should they be new laws? Probably not – this is a problem that the free market is designed to handle, and it should be left in it's hands. Forcing it into the government – even if its a world-organization like the WTO – will simply slow things down and nobody will be happy. The laws won't be able to significantly change anything, people won't stop downloading things, and the record companies will continue to hemorrhage money because they spent money lobbying instead of focusing on upgrading their infrastructure – which is exactly how they've spent the last two decades, although the lobbying money has also been tied up with the RIAA.

The WTO is also a somewhat poor choice to implement changes like additional ISP charges; seeing as how these are currently handled on a national, regional-level, an international body of commerce isn't going to be able to affect much change on them – but the ISPs and record companies are specifically engineered to change and to adapt quickly.

Granted, increasing the use of Creative Commons licensing will go a good ways, and will help some people tremendously; since early 2008, www.boingboing.net has been hosting the serialized version of Joe Jutsko's The Deal under CC licensing. Although he has probably made more money as a result of this than he would have had he forced everyone to buy it, this isn't for everyone – some people, particularly those that have already served their time and spent decades developing their craft – already have a name out there, and just want to get paid. CC licensing is great for people that just want to develop a name for themselves, or believe in the cause that IP should be public – but there are those that just want to make money, and why shouldn't they? Forcing CC on them will greatly limit their potential income.

A final point of clarity: anything you download currently is not illegal. I can connect my iTunes PC music player to their store, and peruse millions of songs that are perfectly legal to download (provided I pay for them). They're very high quality, come with full record art, and the price is reasonable – and Apple and their iPods have sold tremendously well directly as a result for being so far ahead of the curve. Or I could go to the Zune Marketplace, where I can pay $14.99 for unlimited monthly downloads – although you lose access to the music if you stop paying, it's still a pretty damn good price for unlimited and legal music. This argument isn't so much one about getting fair access to things that have already been paid for, it's about justifying the illegality of something, morally and ethically – to ones self.

While legalizing file sharing entirely would provide for an interesting framework of new media developments, I'm not sure that this is at all an optimal idea – would companies like Microsoft really keep producing and updating Windows if nobody was paying for it? Would we have access to wonderful, modern pop music if there weren't billions of dollars to be made from it? I doubt it – consumers vote with their money, and allowing everything to essentially become free instead of addressing the issues would probably just make everything worse.

Carolyn's Response - Affirmative 2

The Debate: Part 3 - Affirmative 2

2008-12-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

Affirmative 2
From Carolyn Dougherty

There is nothing simple and clear cut when it comes to regulating and policing internet piracy. Both sides of this argument agree that the current methods being used to hunt down and prosecute individuals who are downloading music illegally are flawed and ineffective. The difference in philosophies in this debate lies in why and for what purpose do the laws need to be changed, who will benefit from these changes, and how will these changes be monitored and enforced.

Daniel admits that the RIAA's current methods are "failing and backward", but he also argues that to take the RIAA out of the process because they represent "almost the entirety of the music industry", would be detrimental. But, as Alex stated, the money the RIAA is receiving from fines impugned on those who are caught downloading illegally is going into the RIAA's coffers, not to the artists as repayment for copyright royalties. The issue at hand here is not about artists not being paid for their intellectual property, the issue is about the legalities of copying and sharing such IP.

Daniel claims that the populace should be provided with better alternate choices for downloading IP, in and effort to stop them from downloading things at no charge. According to The Boston Globes Staff Writer Alex Beam, on November 18th 2008, the RIAA has sent out over 30,000 letters to individuals and families demanding payment for illegal downloading. These numbers indicate that there are a great number of people who are totally fine with the quality and avenues for downloading now. The problem does not lie in product availability or quality. The problem is two fold and as Alex pointed out, the issue lies in the definitional confines of internet piracy and the unlawful means used for tracking and prosecuting illegal downloader's.

Daniel asserts that changing the definitions of piracy is a poor idea; claiming that the name assigned to a person or act can have a powerful impact on a persons perceptions. Using the examples of "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" when speaking of a gun-toting individual and how the average citizen would react quite differently to that person depending on the label assigned is and ineffective extreme example. Illegal downloader's or "internet pirates" are not a physical threat, and the public in for the most part, does not reel from the stigma of being labeled as "pirates." In an article published July 28th 2007 by Fred Reed of the Washington Post, Reed claims that the labels are not working to deter illegal downloading largely because the public doesn't care, much like illegal drinking during prohibition. Today, countless people smoke marijuana, and it seems that on that front it is only law enforcement who cares, so too internet piracy. Re-defining piracy is not going to change the amount of downloading that is taking place, but it will serve to eliminate the unlawful witch hunts that are currently in place.

In the redefinition of the word "piracy", addressing the issue of "for what purpose" are people downloading is an important factor. In large part, the majority of the populace who are utilizing p2p file sharing is doing it for personal use, not for resale or monetary gain. As Alex pointed out earlier, copying music or intellectual property for personal use is not illegal. Therefore, how a person gains access to that property, in addition to their original purchase, should not be considered illegal. The availability to download on the computer, then burn to a CD or personal listening device is a perk that our current technology affords us as consumers. Staff writer Mark Fisher of the Washington Post, in an article printed on December 30, 2007, sites a case against Jeffery Howell of Scottsdale Arizona, in which Howell is being sued for loading more than 2,000 songs from his personal music collection to his PC. Lawyers are arguing and citing a series of court cases over the last few decades that that" found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording".

Implementing these definitional changes will have minimal financial demands and the as we are living in a global universe these days, the World Trade Organization is the ideal agent for implementing these changes in the laws. Daniel argues that the ISP's and the record companies are specifically engineered to change and adapt quickly, but as implementers of the change they are too close to the issue at hand. The advantages/disadvantages of the change give record companies a bias that cannot be overlooked, and a third party organization such at the WTO is ideal to monitor and oversee these changes worldwide. The RIAA has proven time and again that they are too close the issue to provide clear insight, as shown in their lawsuit against a disabled single mom, Tammy Anderson, who purportedly downloaded gangster rap songs to her home computer. Iain Thompson of the San Francisco Times reported ruling in an article on August 18, 2008, where Andersen's lawyers were awarded costs and interest by a US Federal Court, totally more than $100,000.

This argument that where our music comes from does matter, as Daniel asserts, is relative. There are many people who truly do not care, as long as they get the songs that they are looking for. Providing a means to download music and other IP's legally and without threat of prosecution is the basis of this argument, and in doing so also establishing a method for compensating the artists for their art.

Faris' response - Negation 2

The Debate: Part 4 - Negation 2

2008-12-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

Negation 2
From Faris Sharif

In this essay, I will talk about two things: one, how downloading music is trying to be enforced around the world and, two, how the changing the name of piracy would not help anything. Carolyn said, "there is nothing simple and clear cut when it comes to regulating and policing internet piracy", as everybody knows everything in this world is not always going to be 100% effective, there will always be a flaw in the system and someone will find a way around it. Although the methods are somewhat "flawed and ineffective", they still are catching some individuals.

James stated a good point on if he bought a limited edition collectible version of an album, but wanted to keep it sealed to keep the value. Technically he did buy the album, but he hasn't opened it so he can't listen to it. Now, James believes that since he has already bought a copy of the album that it is okay to download it, wrong. You only bought the right to one copy of the album, and just because you bought the right to a copy of it does not mean that you can now go download it. That is unsound because the artist is selling you one copy of the album, not an unlimited amount. It is not a membership when you buy something of an artist; it is just that specific thing. You do not just buy one thing and get the similar thing.

In an attempt to stopping music piracy, on August 24 2007, from an article from Western Austrailia, Crime Stoppers is looking several teens to help stop music piracy. The teens will be awarded $1000 grant for their school. Not only is the RIAA helping to cut down music piracy, kids are too.

In an article published July 28th 2007 by Fred Reed of the Washington Post, Reed claims that the "labels are not working to deter illegal downloading largely because the public doesn't care, …", the reason why labels are not working so hard is because you have teenagers and adults thinking it is okay to download music for free. They do not know the real truth about illegal downloading and may not even know the punishment if caught. For example, A friend of mine was caught for music piracy was fined $15,000. He was a student at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and was using a better version of Limewire that gives you with more access and better bit rate files of music and movies. My friend settled the lawsuit out of court for nearly $12,000. $12,000 is a lot of money these days and kids don't understand the consequences that they could face. I believe that we should have kids help spread the word just like Crime Stoppers is doing. This could be one way to help stop music piracy.

Now to Carolyn's comment on how the RIAA deals with the money from the fines, even though the money is being funded back to the RIAA, they are using to help find more pirates. Although they are not reimbursing the artists nor the record labels, they are still helping to cut pirates down. If they help cut the illegal downloader's than they will be forced to buy the album which then will the record labels and artists regain somewhat a profit.

An article in The Herald on July 15 2008, has broaden their efforts on stopping music piracy. According the The Herald, Scotland residents who download music will be recognized through a "filtering" technology. This will hopefully help prevent the use of file-sharing and help catch those who are downloading music illegally. They will begin sending letters to the biggest illegal downloader's in warning to tell them that they have been identified and will be watched.

These are just a few ways on how music piracy is trying to be abolished. Now I just want to expand on a few ideas that Daniel implemented about how James wanted to change the laws of illegal downloading. As Daniel stated "changing the title of an action to disguise its criminality isn't going to make it have less of an impact on the music industry, or other individuals … that music theft can have." Whether you change the name of something is not going to impact anymore than it already is. A funny analogy is rapper "Sean Combs", he changes his stage name every two years and people still know who he is. Whether you change the name of something does not mean it is going to help change it. Downloading music is illegal and it will stay illegal until they force a way to help make it legal.

In this essay, I have shown you a few ways the music industry, RIAA, and other organizations and governments are trying to stop music piracy. Although music piracy may go on, I believe that someday music pirates will be punished for their actions. Downloading music is illegal, and whether or not they get caught now or later, only time will tell before the government and RIAA cracks down on them. With the technology improving yearly, sometime in the future will all downloadable music be monitored. Overall, I believe that someday artists will get back to their old revenues on their CD's. Piracy is bad and I believe it needs to be reinforced. How would you like it if everyone stole everything you made. Just think about it.

Philip's response - Negation Rebuttal

The Debate: Part 5 - Negation Rebuttal

2008-12-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

Negation Rebuttal
From Philip Pirkovic

We have seen a very heated debate take place over the last few days. Today I am going to explain what happened in the debate and tell you how and why the negative side (Daniel, Faris and I) have won. The issue at hand is the infamous question of whether piracy, in this case, downloading music, should remain illegal?

We all know piracy has been, and still is a big issue. To many people, piracy is illegally downloading music, movies, software and even books. The reason behind this is simply because people do not feel like wasting money on things that they can get for free. Being a rational consumer, this makes sense. People think yeah, it is illegal, but the chances of me getting caught and punished are slim to none. On the other hand, we have all of the artists and recording companies losing millions of dollars to this horrible thing called piracy.

One of the main arguments that Mister Gromak (who rambled on with a bunch of nonsense and made me waste eight minutes of my life that I will not be able to get back) brought up is the example of buying a CD, vinyl, or a collector item and not being able to download the songs even thought you have already bought the music. He argues that it should not matter how you get the music. James Gromak states, "Why should it be legal to find and utilize the equipment to record a digital version from your own copy of the vinyl but illegal for you to simply download the same album that has already been digitalized? Either way, you have done the same two things: (1) you have bought the album, and (2) you have it digitally. Why should it matter how you manage to get the digital version, if you have already bought it? I argue that it doesn't and that it shouldn't." Daniel comes back by saying that record companies should step in and take control. He offers a few steps, which I believe, will work. If the record companies provide a key code with the CD, which would allow people to download the songs from the CD if they provide the right code. Faris and Daniel also comment on how when you buy a CD, you buy that version of the CD. You are not allowed to download a higher quality version of the songs. My main man Faris stated that, "That is unsound because the artist is selling you one copy of the album, not an unlimited amount. It is not a membership when you buy something of an artist; it is just that specific thing. You do not just buy one thing and get the similar thing." Which is exactly right. Daniel, Faris and I have won this argument because Gromak and Carolyn provide a weak argument to this point. All they state is that you bought the CD, you have the right to download it. WRONG, it is still ILLEGAL! Negative 1…Affirmative 0

The next point that was brought up and discussed was the issue of changing the name of piracy. Mister Gromak stated that we should change the definition of piracy and make it legal. What is next Mister Gormak? Drugs? If you take one thing that is illegal and make it legal, people will push for more and more. Soon, because of your "great" idea, drugs will be legal. Is that what you want? Your buddy Carolyn also goes on to say that "Re-defining piracy is not going to change the amount of downloading that is taking place, but it will serve to eliminate the unlawful witch hunts that are currently in place." If we do what Mister Gromak has proposed, What will happen is that it will encourage more people to download illegally because, well, it doesn't sound like it's so bad. What Daniel proposed is to re-brand piracy. One of the reasons why people do not take it serious because people do not know how bad it really is. He gives the example of words "freedom fighter" and "terrorist". Although they technically mean the same thing, people will react dramatically differently to them when they encounter them". If we re-band piracy and make it the bad thing that it really is, people will stop it. It all relates back to image. People have this image that Piracy is not bad. A common thing that people think is that the rappers and other musicians have ALL the money in the world. They are so rich, that one little CD will not hurt them at all. In reality, it does. If we make piracy seem as bad as people think it is, then it will be decreased dramatically. Negative 2…Affirmative 0.

Another thing that Gromak and Carolyn both tried to do was get you to feel bad. They brought up a few cases where people were caught for pirating music and getting prosecuted. They tried to make you feel bad by saying she didn't make that much money, she had a few kids and so on. However, she did BREAK THE LAW. She knew before hand that there was a chance of being caught. It was a choice that she made and now her and her family have to live with the consequences. This is like saying that we should feel bad for drug dealers that get caught. This makes no sense. We cannot start letting people who break the law off the hook just because they have a family. Once again another weak argument from the affirmative side. Negative 3…Affirmative 0

The last point I am going to talk about was the point that Gromak debated heavily. Gromak ranted on and on about how the RIAA was unethical and illegal. Excuse me Mister Gromak, since when was hunting down someone that breaks that law unethical? I don't know where you learned your ethics are, but they are truly messed up. You go on to state that "So where does all this money the RIAA is getting go? To the artists or record labels of the "stolen" songs? No. It goes into the RIAA's funds for more downloader hunting." You say that the artist's should be reimbursed and the RIAA does not do that. You are correct there, the first right thing you have said this whole time. However, what you did not focus on is the impact the RIAA is having. My main man Faris could not have said it any better when he stated, "Although they are not reimbursing the artists nor the record labels, they are still helping to cut pirates down. If they help cut the illegal downloader's than they will be forced to buy the album which then will the record labels and artists regain somewhat a profit." What you have failed to see with your little eyes is that when the RIAA cracks down on, let me state this point to you one more time ILLEGAL piracy done by people, people will be less likely to download. Hence, making BUYING, not downloading, the only option to get legal music. Once again, another point for the negative. Negative 4…Affirmative 0

Another point that the great Gromak and Carolyn did not bring into play was all of the money loss due to piracy. According to TechWeb, Global music piracy robs the United States of $12.5 billion in economic output and more than 71,000 jobs annually, according to a new study in August 2007. U.S. workers lose $2.7 billion in earnings to music piracy. The recording industry loses about $5.33 billion, while retailers lose about $1.4 billion. According to Stephen E. Siwek, author and principal with Economists Inc., wrote "These direct losses then cascade through the rest of the U.S. economy and the losses of economic output, jobs, and employee earnings multiply," The United States loses more than 46,000 production-level jobs and nearly 25,000 retail jobs due to music piracy. The U.S. government and its citizens lose $422 million in tax revenue, according to TechWeb. That figure includes $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in corporate income and production taxes. Not once did I ever think that me downloading or pirating music online would have that type of long run effect. And I think that most people do not think that either. When you download illegally music, movies or software, think about all of the money that is forgone by taxes. This comes back to hurt us. The government loses this money in taxes because no purchases are made, just downloaded. We are not even talking about movies or software, just music. According to Kevin O'Brien from the May 2008 edition of The International Herald Tribune, Software piracy cost global businesses $47.8 billion in lost revenue last year, up 20 percent from 2006. We are talking about $47.8 billion dollars lost just due to software piracy. No movies, no music, no books, just software. I do not care how rich someone is, no one can afford to lose that much money. Especially in today's world, with how bad the economy has been. According to Mark Reynolds, a group manager of Microsoft stated that "It is generally believed that on average one in every four software programs currently in use is an illegal copy." Without anyone on the affirmative mentioning any of these things, the point goes to the negative. Negative 5…Affirmative 0

In conclusion, this debate was like I said a very heated debate. I think that Mister Gromak was basing all of his thoughts on emotion because he feels so strongly about the subject. In reality, we all know that piracy is illegal and it should remain illegal. There is nothing good coming out of piracy being legal, not one thing.

Kevin's response - Affirmative Rebuttal

The Debate: Part 6 - Affirmative Rebuttal

2008-11-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

Affirmative Rebuttal
From Kevin McConnell

My rebuttal is solely directed at Philip's negative rebuttal. In this rebuttal I will focus on Philip's main arguments and state why they are flawed and consist of fallacies. Philip states the issue is "Wether piracy, in this case, should remain illegal?", this, in fact, is not the issue. Piracy will always be illegal, thats why it's piracy, the problem is distribution of media.

In Philip's first argument he states that buying a music CD then downloading a digital copy for yourself is wrong by saying "You bought one copy of the CD not an unlimited amount". For one thing this is a fallacy, the consumer has bought the album which is not piracy, but under current laws it is copyright infringement. I feel as long as the consumer bought the physical album they should be able to have a digital version of the same quality and format to complement their CD. In our day and age with MP3 sales on the rise and CD player sales are waning, a digital version is a good solution to curtail a majority of copyright infringement because consumers want CDs' for their cars and digital versions for their iPods. When you buy an album, you buy the songs on the album, this should be in any format. Artist shouldn't be able to charge for different versions of the same song. Daniel has a viable solution "If the record companies provide a key code with the CD, which would allow people to download the songs from the CD if they provide the right code". This is were Philip commits a fallacy, tu quoque, this is committed because Faris states "That is unsound because the artist is selling you one copy of the album, not an unlimited amount. It is not a membership when you buy something of an artist; it is just that specific thing. You do not just buy one thing and get the similar thing." The issue of downloading a digital version of an album and purchasing a physical copy of the album is still considered illegal, but with todays high-tech world the RIAA should reconsider the laws regarding this issue.

Philip brings up his next point of rebranding piracy and how it would not change how people view piracy. Rebranding piracy will change the public's view of copyright infringement as long it is not spun in a negative manner. If the public knew the laws regarding copying a CD for personal use the general consensus would be in favor of changing the laws. The image of internet pirates isn't very fitting with those who are caught, the RIAA focuses on family oriented, middle class citizens who pirated for personal use, in order to deter piracy. This enrages the public, the RIAA should focus on those who download and distribute digital media, this would deter piracy dramatically. Prosecuting the average family won't help the RIAA nor the artist image, the RIAA should go after the pirates who bring a camcorder into the movie theater or the peddlers on the street selling bootleg DVDs.

Philip's next point he brings up alleged an fallacy, the appeal to pity, however he continues of use the fallacies of generalization and bad analogy. Philip brings up an example of a women and her family was caught committing the act of piracy and was prosecuted, he said they should pay the price for breaking the law, I say who is this women where are his sources? Philip brought up a bad analogy of comparing this women to drug dealers by stating, "She knew before hand that there was a chance of being caught. It was a choice that she made and now her and her family have to live with the consequences. This is like saying that we should feel bad for drug dealers that get caught. This makes no sense." Philip, drug dealing is no way comparable to piracy or copyright infringement, you can't download a drug, copy, or share drugs over the internet.

Philip's next point regards my parter Mr.Gromak and his personal views on the RIAA and their ethics, Philip you state that Gromak's ethics are "truly messed up", this the well known fallacy of Ad Hominem, you are attacking the person, not the argument. I am not attacking you, I'm pointing out the flaws in your argument. Next you prove our point by stating that money the RIAA receives from court settlements does not going to the artist, but for "downloader hunting". Faris states "Although they are not reimbursing the artists nor the record labels, they are still helping to cut pirates down. If they help cut the illegal downloaders than they will be forced to buy the album which then will the record labels and artists regain somewhat a profit.", Faris, I'm sure that those who are prosecuted for pirating are not worrying that they have legally buy media, they now have more important issues. The artist's image is not improved, the loss is not regained, and piracy only alleviated by a fraction of a percentage.

I must admit Philip and his group's next point is correct, the revenue lost from piracy. The loss of revenue in United States alone is in the billions, but Philip fails to bring up the benefit of piracy to numerous companies. This companies are hardware manufactures and Operating System producers. This includes companies such as VoodooPC and Microsoft. According to Todd Hollenshead, CEO of iD Games states "There is hidden benefit of piracy... but for computer makers, not video game producers. There's a very real and admitted benefit to computer manufacturers -- but that doesn't mean that there also isn't a benefit for the video game makers themselves.", he follows with "Get PC makers to finance new games, pointing out that if they give out the games for free it will help drive more people to buy the next generation of high powered PCs that are needed to run the games. In that way, everyone can benefit.". Computer sales will increase if new hardware is required to run the programs. Computer manufactures are not the only ones to benefit from piracy, MP3 player manufactures such as Apple, sell more iPods to consumers who have pirated music in order to listen to songs with their device. Microsoft the manufacture and creator of the largest distributed operating system in the world, Windows, admits the company benefits from online piracy. The president of Microsoft Corporations' business division states " Our number one goal is that we want people to use our product. If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else, and that's because we understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the install base of people who are using our products." If two of the largest companies in the computer industry benefit from piracy, their must be an angle that you guys are missing.

The problem is not piracy, but distribution of digital media, and it's blurred regulations regarding this new obstacle in technology. We must refocus on creating a solution to deter piracy, which will not come without compromise to consumers and artist.

Marx and the Bible

2008-11-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

Annotation/research paper for my Bible/Apocrypha class. god is a closet Marxist!

What was supposed to be a dramatically shorter annotation that grew into something .. kind of silly. Was an interesting read, though. I forgot to email myself back the final two paragraphs when I finished it on campus, and will add those later.

Marx and the Bible, written by Jose Porfirio Miranda and translated by John Eagleson, attempts to make the argument that Exodus and the prophets are revelations of the "Transcendent God," whom is also known as the "Liberator of the Oppressed." To be more specific, Miranda argues, both in the introduction and throughout the 300 page, highly academic and densely-written work that Yahweh exists exclusively to deliver [his] people from oppression. As covered extensively in chapter 3, God's Intervention in History, Miranda argues highly effectively that the only instances that Yahweh appears and actually does anything is to free his people from oppression, and that His hand and the voice of the prophets appear only when Israel – or another group of people - is treating it's poor and downtrodden with injustice. Miranda's ultimate goal with this work is nothing short of a complete reworking of the economic and theological systems that have allowed for and even enabled the rise of capitalism. Although Miranda's arguments are often compelling, he does little to address alternate arguments (such as those in favor of a capitalistic system), instead keeping his argumentative focus specifically on the interpretation of the words found in the Bible, and those of various Papist documents. He also heavily employs a variety of dialectic methods, occasionally citing but more often than not assuming that the reader has read the works that he references. Although possibly acceptable to the theologian and scholar in general, it made for frustrated reading as I personally have not read anything that he cited. Marx and the Bible, published in 1974 under the Library of Congress denotation of BS 511.2.M5713, is thrown into an argument that, as I have learned in reading it, has been ongoing for sometime; is God a communist?

That actually isn't the argument that's going on, although interpretations of Yahweh as a Marxist – and Marx as a Yahwist – are found throughout the work. In the first chapter, Private Ownership Under Challenge, Miranda asserts that private ownership is a terrible crime, both to a non-religious society but particularly to any Judaeo-Christian group. This is primarily due to the inherent unfairness of labor/wage contracts; the only way that a worker would sell the only thing he can – his labor – for the low rates that the employer (or: the controller of the means of production) will pay is if he is either under duress ("No one could convince us that we are free to pay or not to pay what is charged for a loaf of bread. This is determined by entrepreneurs as a group. You pay it or you die of hunger. (p. 10)) or has no alternate choice in the system. Although several popes have argued that as long as the original capital was justly (we'll return to this shortly) acquired, then the wage/labor contract is inherently fair; however, Miranda asserts clearly that there is no way that one group of people, regardless of historicity, could have acquired so much of the capital of one (or more) groups of people without violence or spoliation. About this system, he says that
"There has never existed a socio-cultural system whose refined constrictive power was so capable of entrapping and hooking people on such deep and psychic levels as the capitalist system. Not only does it make them believe they are free, but it makes them consider inserting themselves into the system and assisting it to function as a life ideal. For the slaves of old there was at least the interior freedom of knowing they were slaves; at least in that little corner of their soul they were free. ... If by chance they should escape, they have no choice by to return; it is the only way they can survive. (pg. 22-23)
Although not speaking directly or necessarily about capitalism, Miranda also says just after that "Only intellectual blindness could lead one to assert that the working-class masses accept the wage system with true freedom, the wage system on which the Western socio-economic system as a whole is based." The author's feelings on capitalism and any wage-based system become pretty apparent, although he supports each argument with eloquence and heavy citation.

His other central point to the first chapter is the attempt to redefine what it means to be just; "Since at least the sixth century A.D., a bald fact has been systematically excluded from theological and moral consideration: "To give alms" in the Bible is called "to do justice." To give alms essentially reverts to giving materially to another person as an act of goodwill or religious virtue. Miranda takes great effort to explain that not only is this mandated by not merely the Bible but God himself, as the manifestation of God occurs only to free people from oppression – and the closest that a mortal can approach to God is through charity, fairness, and being just to the poor. The difficulty with this is that in order to be truly just, no man can be rich; Miranda states this multiple times throughout the book, and the following passage illustrates this in a most interesting way:
"Many have sinned for the sake of profit; he who hopes to be rich must be ruthless. A peg will
stick in the joint between two stones, and sin will wedge itself between selling and buying."
(Ecclus. 27:1-2)
Miranda also makes absolutely no distinction between "good" and "evil" rich men; to him, the trouble with individual ownership instead of communal has nothing to do with the individual, but the act itself. He says that, "Unless one person has lost, another cannot find," suggesting that in order for one man to profit in any tangible way, the other man whom he bargained with must have lost something in the deal - as otherwise, things like surpluses and profits cannot exist, and only through those two things can trade between groups arise. Because only through the exploitation of the working man can profits arise, Miranda also says on page 19 that
"...therefore alms giving is nothing more than a restitution of what has been stolen, and the Bible calls it justice."
I am inclined to agree with him.

Chapter 2, or The God of the Bible, tends to be a chapter with less focus on modern arguments and socialism as an in-depth look at the God of both the New and Old Testament. Instead of the careful and well-measured prose intermingled with papal edicts and modern literary analysis, the second chapter revolves around actual Biblical passages concerning the immaterial nature of Yahweh, and what it means to know Yahweh. On this, Miranda provides the reader with a series of passages from the Old Testament; "He defended the cause of the poor and the needy; is this not what it means to know me? It is Yahweh who speaks" (Jor. 22:16) and later, "I will not accept your offerings and sacred ceremonies; what I demand is that you do justice to the poor and needy." (Hos. 6:6)
He concludes that "The meaning of "to know Yahweh" is thus all the more clear, almost like a technical term: to have compassion for the needy and to do justice to them." (pg. 48)

Following comes God's Intervention in History, in which Miranda begins his linguistic analysis of much of the Bible with a focus on the Old Testament. This section of the book is particularly where a knowledge of ancient Greek and Hebrew would have been particularly useful, as Miranda references it liberally and, it would seem, with the assumption that the reader is familiar with both. Due to this, it's difficult to develop an opposing viewpoint; although what he writes makes a great deal of sense, having absolutely no point of reference makes it troubling to read as it requires a blind acceptance of his arguments – which should never be the case. He goes over one word with high emphasis; mišpat, which appears multiple times throughout his citations, and would seem to mean justice. But not justice in the traditional sense; justice, to modern western man, has little to do with what Miranda argues is the justness of God and righteousness, as modern man is likely swayed by the notion that to follow the law is to be just. Justice, in the original and Biblical sense, is rather to give alms to the poor and ensure that they are not poor. Miranda in chapter 4 will return to the notions of laws and justice.

The third chapter is also the section where Miranda begins to elaborate on exactly when and why God intervenes in the affairs of humans. According to and well-supported by Miranda is the thesis that God/Yahweh appears and manifests his power only in one situation: when his people are oppressing their own poor, or when other groups are oppressing his people. On page 78 he says,
"Yahweh's intervention in our history has only one purpose. Here (in Isaiah 42:5-7) it is explicit: "to serve the cause of justice"." and on the page preceding, "...Yahweh is the God who breaks into human history to liberate the oppressed."
It's an interesting theory, and try as I might I was hard pressed to refute it, aside from perhaps the story of Jonah – although to be fair, it was never explained exactly what the citizens of Nineveh. His careful analysis is also made clear with passages such as,
"Ezekiel uses phrases such as the following 78 times: "You shall know I am Yahweh when I do such a thing ..." For example, "They shall know I am Yahweh when I break their yokestraps and release them from the hand of their captors." (Ezek. 34:27)" (pg. 81)

"The only meaning of the law is to do justice, in the strictest, most social sense of the word." (pg. 146) In chapter four, or Law and Civilization, Miranda examines western law in the context of both modern times and the time immediately proceeding the death of Christ. He does this through a variety of methods, primarily relying on side-by-side examinations of Biblical passages. These very frequently come not so much from the Old Testament but from the various writings of the Apostle Paul, although the destruction versus the damnation of Soddom and Gomorrha are also looked at. Miranda sets out to make the argument that only through Christ and, in a paralell sense, Yahweh/God can true justice be found – as the slaying of the Christ could not have been just, yet it was by the laws of Israel that he was killed.
"You have broken with Christ if you look for justice in the law; you have fallen from grace." (Gal 5:4)
Miranda further explains and rationalizes the crucifixion of Christ in this way:
"Let me repeat: For us to be free from the law it was necessary that the law crucify Christ before our eyes; only in this way could we understand that justice does not come through the law. Therefore Paul says that he has nothing else to preach but Christ crucified (as in 1st Cor. 1:23)." (pg. 189)

As civilization is built directly on top of and is dependent upon laws – which, Miranda has established, are unjust – then civilization in general is equally as unjust. The only laws that should be followed and can offer any sort of justness are those directly handed down by Yahweh, as they were designed to protect the poor and the oppressed – the very thing that Israel was when Yahweh decided to initially intervene in their history. As to the laws, however,
"It's clear that for the prophets the law is important only because its content of justice. Thus, when they proclaim that Yahweh rejects Israel, the law as law does not serve them as a point of support subsistent on itself. The law as such has no substance for them." (pg. 167)
His evidence throughout the chapter is once again primarily examinations of Biblical passages, both through the Old Testament and the New, in addition to some linguistic analysis. Miranda also freely interjects ideas and sometimes opposing thoughts from other writers, but, as with previous chapters, he assumes that the reader is already familiar with them and thus, doesn't bother to quote them – rendering many of the passages incomprehensible.

Chapter 5, or Faith and Dialectics, attempts to pull all of the criteria concerning justice and the law that Miranda established in the four preceding chapters into the concepts laid out by Marx. It is here that Miranda's goal becomes apparent and is realized; by linking what he considers to be the absolute purpose of both Christ and Yahweh – to free Israel/the Gentiles from oppression – with his established idea that the modern economy and the wage contract system is inherently unfair, he creates an interesting paralell to Marxist concepts. It very often seems as though Miranda, and even Paul, are anarchists, as very often their complaints are not merely with the law but also with the state, which is founded atop civilization and the law. Neither provides much of an alternative aside from Christ, alms-giving and good works, unfortunately, each assuming that to know Christ is to be just. On page 204, Miranda writes:
"Paul is convinced not only that the law has failed in human history in its attempt to achieve justice, but also that justice will not be achieved in this world as long as the law exists."
"If justice comes by means of the law, then Christ died in vain." (Gal. 2:21)
Paul and Marx also come together in this chapter:
"Paul and Marx coincide in their intuition of the totality of evil: Sin and injustice form an all-comprehensive and all-pervasive organic structure. Paul called this totality "kosmos". Marx calls it capitalism. But if Marx does not recognize that capitalism is the consummation and deepening of the oppression which was inherent to human civilization since biblical times, then it is denying dialectics and attributing the birth of capitalism to exterior causes, exactly as metaphysics and mechanistic materialism would do it. Mao Tse Tung asks, "Why is it that the Chinese revolution can avoid a capitalist future and be directly linked with socialism without taking the old historical road of the Western countries, without passing through a period of bourgeois dictatorship?" And he can ask this precisely because the structuralization of injustice into total civilization already existed before capitalism." (pg. 250)
Although Miranda is particularly effective at dismantling well thought of concepts and entranched ideals, he lacks a real voice in suggesting alternatives to the status quo; although he might convince people that socialism really is the true path of Christ and a necessary way to enable a society to be just, he does little to address specifics of how this can be achieved. This may be, however, due to Miranda's propensity to employ the work of other people without directly quoting it – it's entirely possible that he's more than willing to lean back after the revolution and be pleased with whatever just .. happens. It makes for an ultimately unsatisfying work, and fails in the context of the larger debate; sure, there should be change. He effectively describes why, and even to an extent, how this might be accomplished. But he doesn't say what should happen after that - "Everything will be just" - is simply naïve.

Throughout Marx and the Bible, Miranda revisits a variety of themes, although his favorite – or perhaps the one he considers to be the most important aside – is the foundation of Greek philosophy. He accuses it of forcing a materialism, a fetishization of physical objects and of the displacement of man as a living, breathing being from the equation. He also argues that its foundations and those with which modern civilization/laws were built upon is inherently dependant upon maintaining the status quo – and, as he has demonstrated in a variety of ways throughout, the status quo is generally a poor state of living. In chapter 1, he writes:
"For the Bible is nothing like the "neutral arbitration" which the Greco-Roman tradition imposed on us, a so-called neutral arbitration whose unimpeded task is to preserve the status quo by overcoming with force whoever challenges it. For the Bible, law consists in finally achieving justice for the poor and oppressed of the world. Completely opposite to the defense of the status quo, the realization of justice not only subverts it, but it also demands that we abolish the state and the law. ... Anyone who believes that a total change of attitude is possible without a total change of the mental system does not know what a mental system is."
(pg. 22)
This is a theme that Miranda revisits often, and to great effect; he quotes Aristotle as saying, "Truth is incompatible with the condition of the slave."
This work is important because it addresses as aspect of the God of Abraham that is seldom addressed - what it means to know him, and to do his works. More than the contextual definitions that he has provided throughout, Marx and the Bible shows that almost the entirety of modern Christianity is not merely off-track, but outright wrong. Although opponents of organized religion are not rare and are never anything but outspoken, very seldomly do they approach the question of justness, fairness, and overall correctness of both the institution and civilization as a whole with the troubling accuracy and candor that Miranda presents his case with. Although the debate between socialism and capitalism has all but died off in all but academic circles in the United States, this work should still be read - if only so that the notion that God is a closet Marxist can become more widespread.
What is at stake in this argument is the prosperity of all people, and not merely the class of people capable of the production of material goods. Particularly considering that it is that same class of people that ensure that Christianity is the dominant, prevailing mindset in the United States in particular - that they are using a philosophy that is directly antithetical to their methodology of governance and economics is something that the people exploited by their system should and deserve to know. The people that are abused and manipulated not merely by the laws, the state, and the prevailing economic theories should know that they are being manipulated also through their faith. This work, or at least the ideas presented within it, should also be reviewed by those disenfranchised with oganized religion, as I found that Marx and the Bible provided me with more reason to accept not only Christ but Yahweh as divine and just than any other argument I've ever encountered. It's a shame that they're incompatible with thought processes too firmly entrenched; Marx and the Bible is an interesting took for conversion.

New McDonald's Sign:

2008-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

New mcdonalds sign: 90210 taste. 48503 price.

Fuck you.

2008-11-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

Game Criticism

2008-11-19T23:12:00.001-08:00

Presentation/speech I had to give for Public and Professional Writing. I didn't really follow the directions, provide visual cues, or even focus on the actual presentation of the thing: I delivered it straight-up as a speech read from my laptop, and ad-libbed two minutes when I realized it wasn't long enough. It's filled with lies and inaccuracies, but I got an A on it anyway.

According to metacritic.com, the new PC game Dead Space garnered a perfect score from six gaming institutions. This speaks directly to a problem that permeates the gaming criticism industry at large; the tendancy for a journalist to enjoy a product so much that they forget the function of their position. Gaming journalists are not employed to be fanboys, are not employed to write about the passion they find in a game, no, although these both are things they may do – however, the function of a gaming journalist is rather to analyze, criticize and demonstrate an understanding not only of the game but the game in the context into which it falls. No game is ever released in a vacuum, and all ideas presented within it are a culmination of those that came before; innovation is rare and is certainly to be celebrated, but the pillars that a new game is built upon must also be acknowledged, and often, many current journalists do not employ this. Gaming criticism and art criticism are terribly similar in many ways, and the tenets that bind both are the same; rigorous examination of theme, composition, flow, and the effect on the viewer are among the chief attributes. However, many gaming journalists fail in this regard, doing a disservice to the gaming industry at large, the readership, and most importantly, the consumer that must spend his hard-earned money on the games they review. By failing that most important aspect, the failure to effectively deliver a fair criticism of a game, they trick consumers into purchasing products that, had they been made more aware of faults found within, would have never purchased.

I humbly request a position at Eurogamer for the very reasons above; I have, over the last decade, learned the art of criticism, both by reading a great deal of it and writing a great deal of my own. I have selected Eurogamer above all other companies because I believe, both through your mission statement and the quality of the work found on your website, that it is the optimal place to provide hard gaming criticism. What I will bring to Eurogamer is just that; hard, effective criticism, driven always with the consumer and he forwarding of the gaming institution at the forefront of mind.

As I spoke about in my personal letter, addressed [date], I am currently writing for my university's newspaper, the Michigan Times. Although I am not a particular fan of the overwhelmingly right-leaning content found in the editorial section, I no less do my absolute best work at criticism for them at all times, and genuinely believe that I have made the Arts section of their newspaper a more informative, intelligent, and worthy place for consumers to help determine which pieces of media are worth paying money for. In the first issue of the newspaper, I wrote about the newest Metallica album, Death Magnetic, and although I found a very small handful of the tracks to be worthy of the legacy originally perpetuated by the band in the late 1980's, I found their newest attempt at metal – which, at this point, is really more hard rock than anything else – to be derivative of other bands writing music in the modern day, stale, and though a great deal of effort was put into it, uninspired. I received a small volume of negative feedback for this criticism from members of the community, and although I read them with the possibility that I had misjudged the album in mind, I found that, in the end, the standards that were determined to be used by the newspaper – artistic merit, ingenuity and a sense of forwarding the art – were higher than that small minority of readers. As an aside, I received more positive and intelligent feedback for my work on Death Magnetic than negative.

My focus in education has been in communication, although I do not have a communications degree – I will be attaining a Bachelor's Degree in the Arts – English shortly, and feel quite strongly that the key to effective communication is to have a clear understanding of the impact, effect and motivational shifts that using the proper phrase, tone, and prose structure can have on an audience, whether they be peers, readers, or superiors. I chose English with a specialization in writing because I feel that analysis and ideas can best be delivered by the written word, and as such, have placed great emphasis on bettering my prose. As such, I feel that my extensive writing background would bring an excellent vantage to your institution.

I have also recently begun an internship for the celebrity-news oriented website (Yes, Kathy, it worked) thecelebritycafe.com. Although I personally find the paparazii-style celebrity-mongering format of their site deplorable, I have no less contributed my best work to it. In that capacity, I seek to provide news about the media industry at large, and most recently wrote an article detailing the Supreme Court discussions regarding the usage of profanity on prime-time television. I have placed effort also into covering aspects of celebrity life that focus not on specific celebrities, such as their children and love lives, but the issues that affect them, such as wages, film box-office profits, and striking writers. Well, I would have covered that ideally, but I was not yet interning there when the writer's strike was occuring. My editor and boss – a man named Dominick, whom I know primarily as DSMinderino over an instant messaging program – has told me that he is quite pleased with my work, saying that it provides a hard news angle to their website to help put the celebrity gossip which permeates their website into a better context for their readers, and that it has garnered substantial praise from the community.

While I spend most of my time for the Celebrity Cafe covering news elements, I also write music reviews, providing in-depth analysis and examinations of theme, flow, content and outright enjoyability. My work in this context, while typically longer and I would argue more thought-provoking than many of the other, one hundred “I like it or I don't but don't have a reason why” reviews, has garnered further praise from my employer, and solicits more reactions from the readership of the website than many of the other reviews posted. I believe that this has occurred not due to any particular stylistic differences between myself and the other writers, but because my commitment to the Celebrity Cafe is different; although for some simply stating that they enjoyed an album is enough, my responsibility – my overrriding and completely encompassing responsibility – is to the consumer, and to providing them with the information that they need to determine if an artist is listening to.

Throughout my life, I have worked for a number of institutions whose business practice, ethics, codes of conducts and methodologies I disagreed with, both for moral and social reasons. However, I persevered, much as I do at the Celebrity Cafe, and was granted recognition through employee evaluations and employee of the month awards multiple times. This is because my responsibilities to myself are left at the door – when under employment, my absolute focus is not on doing what I personally enjoy, but doing what I am instructed to do in as timely and effective of a manner as possible. Sometimes, this is difficult; selling warranties on a product that you know cannot be fulfilled, providing accessories to items that are useless, and guaranteeing that returns are always painless and easy. Although I performed my functions well and stayed well ahead of quotas, I kept always the good of the consumer in mind, always asking questions of myself like, “Am I selling a product that is the easiest to sell, or am I selling the product that will most benefit the consumer?”

I always chose and ensured I was making the latter decision.

I, again, ask to become a staff writer at Eurogamer. My skillbase, knowledge of gaming, both in PC, console, and tabletop, is terribly high, and I have taken great effort and pride in my attempts in learning as much as I can about the industry. I would use this knowledge, combined with my analytical skills, honed through years of literary composition, to better not only the publication itself but but the consumers that read – and depend on – effective analysis.

2008-11-18T11:50:00.000-08:00

Though this isn't about anybody in particular, I liked how it came out and the wording of it. Missed an IM from someone last night, and sent..

===== me wrote=====
Sorry for missing you last night - hope to again maybe soon.

=====XXXXX wrote=====
you hope to miss me again?

====me wrote====
er, miswrote that; i hope to have another opportunity to speak with you, although wanting to miss you implies a certain desire to speak or be in contact with you; thus, in a sense, i do hope to miss you again.

Celebrity Cafe Listings

2008-11-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

Ok - placing this here because it will be easiest for me to access it from and edit accordingly. Going to be hard-linking articles I'm writing for Celebrity Cafe, arranged in weeks. Mostly so I have a better idea how much time I'm putting into this - supposed to be ten hours/week - but in the case that any of my, oh, five followers are curious what the sound of your soul being sold is. Although I think this is mostly for my mother.

Last update: November 19

Music Reviews
wk1:
Guggeinheim Grotto – Happy the Man
Plushgun – Pins and Panzers

wk 1: (2)
Interactive Disney Toys
Supreme Court Profanity Hearing

wk 2: (9)
GnR Pirate Pleads Guilty
Youtube + MGM
Batman Sues .. Batman?
Lindsay Lohan is a stupid bigot
George Strait owns CMAs
Casting Bond Girls
Mama Africa Dies
Some retard murderer retained
"Twilight" signing fun

wk 3:
Disney Does Some Shit with Imax
Twilight Might Unsurprisingly Suck
Marc Jacobs Did Something I don't Care About
People Get Fucking Stupid for Dumb Vampire Movies
Nonsense About Bond Estimates
Earlier Nonsense About Bond Estimates

wk 4:
Going to be Another Fucking "Twilight"
Lol Fuck Axl Rose
John Lennon ... is Forgiven?
Michael Jackson lol
SAG Strike
Bush Lets Some Guy Off the Hook
Celebrities are Awesome

Internet Piracy and You

2008-11-09T20:46:00.000-08:00

Copy/paste of the speech I have to give in about .. 21 minutes.

Position Speech: Piracy is Awesome

In an interview with portfolio.com – the web version of the business magazine Conde Nast Portfolio – Jim Griffin, a music industry veteran working with Warner Music said that it has become "purely voluntary to pay for music". With the rise of easily-replicated media, it's easy to see why – grabbing the new Bloc Party album is an easy affair, consisting of pointing your web browser to the correct site and waiting for thirty minutes. Given the ease with which consumers can illegally download not only music, but also movies, computer software and books, it's obvious that the producers of any sort of digital media need to employ new methods if they wish to remain in business and profitable.

Although it is currently illegal to download any sort of media in almost any capacity if you're not paying for it, consumers continue to do so. In an interview on informationweek.com, the IPI – the Institute for Policy Innovation, a group focused on monitoring and making recommendations for economic growth to businesses in the United States – claimed that "global music piracy robs the United States of $12.5 billion in economic output and more than 71,000 jobs annually." The only legal recourse at the moment for the recording industry is, at the moment, to sue people in civil courts, in varying quantities depending on what the RIAA – the Recording Industry of America – believes to be the financial damages that downloaders caused to the record company that owned the rights to the downloaded album. In 2003, the group took 261 file-swappers to court, according to news.cnet.com. Some of them were held liable for $150,000 in damages. Most accepted settlements, averaging from $2,000 per infraction to $12,000. Given that not just music, but piracy of all kinds has continued to grow in the five years since 2003, it is apparent that suing individuals and failing to adjust to the demands of a new, high-speed internet based market is simply not working for the producers of intellectual property.

The trouble with the statistic quoted above about $12.5 billion losses due to music piracy in 2007 is that it assumes that every instance of an illegally downloaded song, had it not been pirated, would have actually been paid for. Groups like the IPI and the RIAA are fond of citing the drop in CD sales that occurred during the early 2000's and late 1990's, arguing that the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing – the first major tool developed for illegally downloading music – was directly responsible for the decline in record sales. They fail entirely to acknowledge any number of other possible elements responsible for this, whether they're due to economic reasons, like people not having the money to buy five $20 albums each week, or reasons of taste, or any number of any things.

Their argument is symbolic of the systemic problem with the methods in which most of the media industry is employing to combat piracy; because it’s so easy to do and the chances of prosecution so rare, and the benefits of piracy greatly outweigh the benefits of purchasing items, consumers have little incentive to go about getting their music, movies and games in a legal manner.

In order for the music industry to return to profitability and to cut the losses incurred from illegal downloading, a series of measures must be taken. First and foremost, media must have a product that is better than what can be downloaded illegally, and there are a number of ways in which this can be done. DVDs can have online-exclusive content, accessible only by people that purchased the product in a store. Buying an album can guarantee rights to download it as long as the record company is in business, ensuring that the death of a computer hard drive or a scratch on a CD doesn't mean that you lose access to the album. Computer games have attained a modicum of success with this, granting people that purchased the game access to new, downloadable content and the ability to download digital copies of the game in the future.

Second, the producers of content must cease in the punishment of people that legitimately pay for said content. Since the inception of computer gaming, CD keys – a set of numbers and letters found typically in the instruction manual for a game – must be input before the game can be installed. The actual CD or DVD must also be in the computer, a so-called security feature that forces the consumer to buy a new disc if they lose their original copy or accidentally damage it. In the recently released PC game called Spore, users were initially allowed to install it three times – ever. That means that if you buy a new computer every two or three years, you wouldn’t be able to play it without buying another copy after a decade. When a consumer purchases an item, it should become his forever – forcing the people that legitimately pay for a product to combat those that would rather not pay is wrong-minded and counterproductive, as Spore quickly became one of the highest-downloaded games in thepiratebay.com history. Across the media spectrum, making personal backup copies of CDs, DVDs and games is not merely frowned upon, but a federal offense – even if it’s only for personal use! Not permitting consumers to have a backup copy of any form of media for personal use in the case of loss or damage to it is unnecessary, and permitting consumers to easily do this would greatly enhance the reason to actually pay for a product – instead of illegally downloading it.

Jim Griffin, working in tandem with Warner Music, has come up with a novel approach to the problem. Tack on a surcharge to an internet access bill, distribute the money made among record companies and media producers, and permit consumers to download all of the music they want. Although I don't believe that this is either a fair or ultimately effective path to take, I believe that they are taking the correct approach – it's innovative and it demonstrates that, at least to an extent, companies are beginning to accept the nature of the modern downloading internet. Disney, infamous for it's prosecution of infringements upon it's copyrighted image of Mickey Mouse, is also changing the way that it views the modern media world. As reported on paidcontent.org, Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney acknowledged that "piracy is a business model," and that "it exists to serve a need in the market." They plan to place some of their television content on the internet in a high-quality format, and package it with advertising. Although pirating the show would remove the ads, it would likely be much lower quality and a larger hassle to do – this is exactly the sort of behavior that television companies need to universally adopt if they wish to continue seeing high revenue from their products. According to the Wall Street Journal, Twentieth Century Fox plans to combat the rampant piracy of their DVDs in Chinese streets by introducing high-quality copies of DVDs for as little as 2$; although this is more expensive than pirated copies, Fox believes that the dramatic increase in quality will persuade consumers to buy official products instead of pirated ones.

Although these solutions and acknowledgments are only the first of a series of changes necessary to curb piracy, they demonstrate that companies are willing to do what it takes – especially since the prosecution of downloaders simply isn't cutting down the quantity of downloads. The primary idea that companies need to understand is that the people paying for their product aren't the criminals, and shouldn't be treated as such – I believe that when consumers feel that not only are they getting a better product for paying, but are also being rewarded for doing so then we will see a dramatic drop in piracy rates. Until then, well – there's always thepiratebay.com.

A beginning

2008-11-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

First piece of writing published from a non-school and non-personal institution was today. Placing here for the sake of posterity and chronicling.

http://thecelebritycafe.com/features/21366.html

2008-11-04T20:03:00.001-08:00

woot

"All we have is belief and beer"
-j3ss1

lol tournament - Thoughts on Professional Gaming

2008-10-30T13:48:00.001-07:00

Something to clean up and expand on later. Pasted from an old Kotaku thread.

I think the big issue with broadcasting video game competitions - at least in America - is that there are so damn many of them.

When you have three full generations of males in the U.S. sitting down every Saturday for college and Sunday for pro football, they're all watching the same game. the same holds true for baseball, basketball, and so on - the rules are the same (or have minor alterations on a league-by-league basis) regardless of which iteration of the game you're watching. This doesn't work for gaming - I've never played DOA4, and thus have zero interest in watching a competition devoted to it. The same for Halo 3 (gasp!). I'd love to see a competition for Team Fortress 2, but how many Halo 3 fanatics and DOA4 pros even play it?

These things work in countries like Korea because they've based the major competitions on the same game - Starcraft. The ever-evolving gaming world changes so quickly that new "competition-grade" games come out every few months; some games, like the newest Command and Conquer, actually had a built in feature where you could not only spectate and broadcast the game, but be a damn announcer for it.

One of two things need to happen before game competition will really go either mainstream or truly profitable (even if only in the gaming community);

1. Technology must plateau so that graphics, and thus core gameplay mechanics, are able to stabilize and create a consistent platforms that become familiar amongst the watching base, and

2. A game is developed that people will be willing to use exclusively, or at least a large amount of time so it develops that "traditional permanence" that games like golf and football have. Although it isn't necessary for the first point to come about for the second, I don't see it happening - too many of us, particularly in this pseudo next-gen environment, are becoming too graphically driven to allow lesser polygon counts to sate us.

On the Use of Setting and Theme as Characters

2008-10-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks, I've seen a couple of movies that seem to use inanimate objects as key characters in both plot and character development. This is something with which I have very little experience with; it's entirely possible that this is a phenomenon that is quite common in art house and indie films, but previously I'd never really been exposed to much of it.

The first of these that I saw was The City of Ember, based on a children's book. Although the primary characters, while occasionally interesting, were generally dull, generic and static throughout the work. However, the City of Ember, a city built far below the surface of the earth in an attempt to save a portion of humanity, quite succinctly fulfills the character and plot development void left by the script and the characters found within. The struggle of the children's movie revolves around the reactior of the city. Built hundreds of years ago and meant only to sustain the city for a specific period of time, the measures set in place by the Builders have fallen to the wayside and escape and repair measures forgotten. As a result, the reactor is failing, and periods of terrifying blackout are becoming commonplace.

Lina and Doon set out to discover a method to repair the faulty reactor and, barring that, an escape both for them and the other inhabitants of the city. The remainder of the plot isn't terribly relevant to this. Through their adventures in the main avenues in the streets of Ember, Lina and Doon encounter a variety of obstacles; a pipeworks in a state of quite serious decay, lights that fail at the most inopportune times (not that there ever IS a good time for this), huge squig/cthulu monsters roaming the pipeworks, a series of railings and darkness surrounding the city. The characters don't so much walk about the set pieces as normal actors would in a typical film, but are rather immersed and absorbed by them, and often their fate is determined by the seemingly random layout of the city. Although Lina and Doon are responsible for discovering the mechanism by which the denizens might be saved, it is Ember itself that provides directions for them; an old manuscript for functions is found, and when the proper .. dongles are aligned, a full-scale evacuation begins. The benevolence in this part of the movie is quite striking in a context to be mentioned in the next paragraph. The city, once begun, initiates the escape and leads them into their salvation.

However, the city also encounters a series of problems; the waterwheel, designed to raise when the lifeboats enter the river, grinds and destroys itself, due to a combination of design and human neglect. The only method of repair for this wheel is the sacrifice of a character that isn't even worth naming; although the city attempts to kill Doon and Lina, a human must intervene and shed blood of his own veins in order to save them – not from a terrible event, but from what appears to be the city contriving against them.

The city itself is beautiful, and a marvel to behold; the people that developed the graphics behind it deserve an award, particularly because it has made me want to explore Ember more than any other film previous to it made me want to be a part of it's setting. Sure, Moria seemed okay, and the mountainscape after the escape from the mines was beautiful, but it wasn't engaging – not nearly so much as the City of Ember. The sheer volume of mysterious passageways and secret ducts in the pipeworks warrant the sort of exploration only a little boy could possibly hope to succeed in. It's a shame I can't visit it, it being fictional in all.

The second film, Anamorph, handles the analogue of Ember in a different light; the only character development found throughout is the work of art by the antagonist serial killer of the film. Although the characters found within are believable, sad and warranting of sympathy, little care is to be bothered with them when held up to the glory that was the art. It's quite apparent as well that this is the emphasis the director and writer of the movie wanted to place. Through exposition, we learn what an anamorph is, and how it is used in art. To paraphrash, it's a work of art that appears one way – sometimes chaotically, sometimes beautifully – at one angle, and takes on an entirely different significance and meaning when seen in another. This is accomplished, for example, by the stringing up of a series of body parts, hewn from a man and gutted in gross and vile ways, and at the far end of the room a fish-eye hole on the top of a rusted rod. When the work is viewed from the lens, it becomes a terrifying demon monster thing that is genuinely disturbing. This further manifests itself in images taken at other crime scenes; an icon that is representational of the coming murder scene can be found in each photo, although these are only seen in, as the film did it, the reflection of a mirrored coffee mug.

They of course ultimately lead to the location of the killer, and all is more or less resolved in typical cop/mystery drama fashion, although the culmination of the villains art is quite startling. It's easy to say that it was painstakingly sculpted before the movie was written, but by employing a bit of suspension of disbelief, it's a disturbing climax (of sorts). The art functions as a character because the murders were initially all done in a fashion focusing on composition and lighting, and not perspective; but as the murderer – the artist – evolves, he begins to attain an absolute mastery of color, composition and true form. It's fascinating to watch the movie while taking note of these things, and although this certainly isn't a movie for everybody, it was absolutely great if you're into the analysis of imagery and symbolism.

The intentional lack of character development on the other humans in the film, while likely alienating many people, is what makes this movie shine; the entirety of the work directs your attention to the art, suggesting that art is the only worthwhile pursuit (at least in this context), and it succeeds dramatically, and almost painfully, and certainly gruesomly well. It' something I plan on seeing again in the theatre in the next few days, as I imagine that this work is even more fascinating the second time around.

I pray that developers in the future begin to use setting and themes as characters to be developed on their own, and any sense of morality coming from the work to be coming from those two things. It was quite refreshing to see that settings and themes aren't to be developed at the sole discretion and influence of the characters, and I was, in a word, blown away by its effects.

I think I've found a new love.

Ps: if you have any films or novles that employ this sort of development in them, please, please let me know – I'm going to quickly becoming desperate to feed this new longing of mine.

Interview (sort of) With Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun

2008-10-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

For a class I was told to interview someone in a profession that I wanted to go into, and the transcribe what we talked about in an essay format. It's supposed to be tough-style writing, which I suck at, but here it is anyway.

Although I have a great many interests and feel that there are a variety of career choices that would suit me, two particular subjects have been particularly engaging to me since I was a child. The first was video games. Although I find gaming in all of its forms to be fascinating, gaming in its relatively modern and present state has proven to be a stronger motivator for me than almost anything else. Although this field of interest developed in me at a young age, my drive to the written word took place later. It wasn't until high school that I realized that the written word could be so powerful of an instrument; although Greek and Roman concepts, plays and systems of government persist in a relevant fashion through today, their empires and kings have long since died out. With these in mind, I have decided to follow the path of the wordsmith with an emphasis on gaming journalism. I decieed to speak with Jim Rossignol, a freelance gaming/science/technology journalist that is one of the four primary contributors of my favorite blog: Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I met Jim in a dark, smoke-filled bar in the lower-east district of Manchester, both because he's there and I read about its state during the Victorian era as an industrial hellhole, rampant with disease, trash and miserably oppressed proletariats. The prior sentence isn't entirely true; I am fascinated by Manchester and the UK in general, but I've never been there. Trans-Atlantic flights are difficult to justify on the budget of a student. I instead chose the path of email correspondence. Due to email being cold and digital, I have chosen instead to imagine our interview taking place in that same dark, smoke-filled bar in the lower-east district of Manchester. Since this is at least partially fiction, I feel absolutely no guilt by lying and saying that I picked up the tab.

Jim's upbringing, aside from having a mother with “an intense love of the English language” and living in the UK, was similar to my own. He was surrounded by books and had early, regular access to computing technology as it developed, and, being a boy interested in nerdy things, played games regularly. He received a degree in philosophy that, although not directly applicable to his field, he feels benefited him greatly; he claimed that his pursuit of philosophy granted him a wide base for understanding arguments and for the analysis of ideas presented both in his field and life in general. Although he claims that his degree was the correct one, he would “argue that knowledge of the subject and a passion for describing and analyzing it far outweighs the value of formal education”.

I found this to be highly motivating; Jim, between pulls from his pint and nervous glances at a table of shady-fellows nearby, had managed to validate the small selection of skills that I posses and value above most of the others. My younger brother refuses to go to the cinema with me anymore for fear that, after the movie, I'll analyze it to death and find so many faults with it that even though he enjoyed it during the actual screening, he finds that he no longer wants to like it. I thoroughly enjoy having this effect on people. I find few things in life more entertaining as picking apart various pieces of media and telling people why their enjoyment of a particular movie, album or television show is stupid, and Jim's suggesting that these are the necessary elements of his profession excites me greatly – I might actually be able to squeeze a living out of being a cultural elitist jerk.

There are, of course, to be downfalls. As Jim is a freelancer, the majority of his work is commissioned and dictated by his publishers and editors from a variety of print and online publications, and he has little time to do any personal writing. The vast majority of his time is taken up with playing games and writing about them – to the degree that he says it takes a great deal of willpower to remain motivated He also says that gaming journalism tends to pay less than traditional journalism, and that “the low levels of pay means we have to grind out a lot more words to pay our rent than the average mainstream hack”. I found his word choice of “grind” to be particularly interesting. In the type of gaming that I find myself spending the most time with – massively multiplayer online games (such as World of Warcraft) – grinding is a euphemism for spending a large amount of time doing one specific task with a goal in mind. Usually, this involved commiting genocide on a group of computer-controlled monsters to achieve some end or another. Using “grind” as he did places the profession into an interesting context for me, as someday I'm going to be grinding words to, as he says, pay rent – and that's a skill I'm already pretty good at and feel I can perform professionally.

Jim's favorite aspect of his job is simply being able to write and to be paid for it; this aligns with my personal goals quite well. In fact, one of the most validating experiences of my life was receiving a payment for being published in the school news paper. Although not nearly enough to cover rent – or even the tab that Jim and I were quickly building – it was proof that my word-grinding was actually worth something, and this was incredibly inspirational and motivating to me.

The primary message that I took from this interview has two parts. First, that I've chosen what seems to be the correct career, and promises to be sustainable and personally fulfilling. Second, that I am inexplicably, staggeringly, and bewilderingly already on the proper course. This is a new concept for me. Generally, I'm on the receiving end of grievous errors and am scrambling to fix them. For once, the path forward is actually mostly clear; there might be two of them due to the copious amount of English beer consumed, but I can at least tell which way they're going now.

God as a Desktop Commander

2008-10-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for an exam in my Bible/Apocrypha class at university, and thought it might interest people. It's a brief examination of God as a gamer. The (Harris) bits are from the text book.

---begin transmission---

“All that human participants do, all that they achieve by war, conquest, or any other means, is explicitly ascribed to Yahweh's actions.” (Harris: 82) Of all of the attributes of Yahweh found throughout the Torah, few of them remain consitant. The trait which appears to be singular in that it is found throughout the actions of Yahweh is that of his drive to manipulate both people and the world to means only he at the time is aware of. In this regard, he has the mentality and capacity of what is jokingly referred to as a desktop commander in the gaming community. A desktop commander someone that regularly plays PC strategy games in which one assumes the role of commander (God) over legions of relatively insignificant characters (Israel) and, in most modern strategy games, a small selection of hero units with powers and abilities far and above the regular masses (Moses, Noah, Jacob and so on).

Yahweh, similar to most desktop commanders, plays a series of games with his people. The primary game, that of regularly testing the faith of Israel and punishing them for failure, is supplemented by his metagame, or secondary/game-within-a-game; that of placing people and things into motion and seeing what will happen as a result. Although the Judaeo-Christian concept of God (Yahweh) partially relies on his being all-knowing and thus being able to see future events, this aspect of the godhead is not realized in the Torah, as Yahweh regularly makes mistakes (the Flood) and is unaware of all evens simultaneously (Adam and Eve becoming clothed/eating the apple). This, too, corresponds with the struggle of the gamer; an impossibility to know everything, and the inability to be aware of the exact results of a series of events, regardless of how well planned they may be.

In the game Black and White (Lionhead Studios, 200x [hey, it's a take-home exam, not a research paper]), the player lacks direct control of the great beast that is assigned to him. The player is permitted to slap, feed, play with and point to areas where he would like his beast to go, and as the beast grows in power he also becomes more receptive to commands issued. This is similar to Yahweh's control over Israel; although he cannot directly manipulate people, he can suggest locations and provide for them when necessary, such as instructing Moses to lead Israel from Egypt. Although Yahweh cannot control Ramses II, he does provoke him into chasing Israel into the sea, where they are destroyed – according to plan.

The final goal of the desktop commander is not victory, although it often appears, both to the gamer and the observer, to be the case. The goal is the lead up to the coordinated movements of people and events, regardless of the outcome,although specific ones may be desired. In Black and White, players may at specific times unleash a series of cataclysmic events, such as fires or torrential rains, to see what happens to both their beast and the beasts of other gods. This is mirrored by Yahweh's placing of the Tree of Knowledge in the same place at the initial seat of humanity. One would have to assume that Yahweh is stupid to not question whether he'd considered the possibility of Eve eating the apple, and one would have to assume Yahweh was blind to not be in grave doubt whether Zedekiah would retain his faith and trust in the salvation of Yahweh or if he would choose in the strength of man.

Whether he's deliberately testing the faith of his people by commanding the devout among them to build an ark, or giving them vague directions across a desert and into enemy territory to subjugate it, Yahweh is constantly playing games with his people. None of his other attributes are to be trusted for their consistency; his benevolence of food and fruitfulness can be destroyed by a mistake; his great rage (the Flood) and animosity can be checked by regret and Covenants; his fairness to aliens (“Do not oppress the alien (Exodus 23:9) is negated by them being a nation outside Israel (kill everything on the other side of the Jordan). The singular trait that Yahweh exhibits in any consistency is his inalienable drive to manipulate, coordinate, and game the system which he has created.

Book Review: Passionate Declarations by Howard Zinn

2008-08-07T09:55:00.001-07:00

Copied near-verbatim from the work I'll be handing in today.

Within the first ten pages of Passionate Declarations, the author begins his first in a series of departures from academic orthodoxy; he makes it abundantly clear to readers that, although he will attempt to portray ideas contrary to his own accurately, he “ ... never listened to the advice of people who said that a teacher should be objective, neutral and professional.”(7) Howard Zinn justifies his disregard for objectivity by claiming that it's an impossible goal for any historian, and that “neutrality means accepting the way things are now”(7); that all people, due to their socioeconomic backgrounds, have an inherent bias, and Zinn does little to mask his. Siding almost exclusively with the everyman of the working class, he makes it difficult to accept the conventional wisdom that was, at least to my experience with history, universally accepted.

Zinn's most passionate declaration is the essay titled “Just and Unjust War”. He examines the claim that there are certain situations that can make a war a just war, and repeatedly comes to the conclusion that war is never just. A friend, attempting to convince me to read this book, fed me the bit about there never being such thing as a just war; my first question to him was, “What about World War II?” Throughout high school and years of watching programs on the History Channel, I had always felt that WWII was not only just, but necessary. It had seemed (and been taught) that the United States was forced to go to war in defense of (white) European allies and to halt the Fascist-Kraut threat from engulfing the whole of Europe, all while avenging the evil at Pearl Harbor. Although Zinn failed to convince me that military intervention in specific situations, such as Germany invading Poland, is never justified, he did manage to place additional light on the conflict. He questions if we went to war on humanitarian grounds, or because the threat of the Axis Powers threatened the position of the United States in the world, and ultimately comes to the conclusion that our reasons for going to war were purely economic, and the implicit argument is that this is a terrible reason to go to war. This is largely due, according to Zinn, because of the U.S.' failing to intervene against fascism and mass-murder in not only the Spanish Civil War, but also in the bombing of Bosnia by Italy, long before the German's Blitzkrieg began.

Passionate Declarations also explores what was, for me, a novel concept about Pearl Harbor: that it was a reaction to an embargo placed on Japan for both scrap iron and oil in the summer of 1941 and thus not the unprovoked assault I'd been told that it was, but rather a predictable – and, to some, a desirable - reaction. The embargo was placed by the Unites States out of their fear that Japan would soon begin taking over various U.S. markets, specifically those of tin, rubber and oil. Zinn argues that we went to war “only when our possession Hawaii was attacked and when our navy disabled with bombs.”(82) Zinn's use of the adjective “possession” in this instance telling, and similar use of language throughout the work makes his opinion and interpretation of events clear; that ultimately, everything in the world comes down (for the group in power) to money and power.

One of the central themes of the first few essays is that of the Machiavellian statesman. In the first essay after the introduction, Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy, Zinn works to define the term through both historical and modern context. He explains that not only are any means justified for the correct ends, but that even above the end results, the Prince, or the State, must be served. “The end of Machiavelli's Prince ... is not the welfare of its citizenry, but national power, conquest, and control. All is done in order “to maintain the state.”” (12) Zinn thus paints various lieutenants of history, ranging from men responsible for the butchering of thousands of Jews before and during World War II and even including his own experience in World War II as a bombardier. They, and he, committed their actions not because they felt it was the right thing to do, but because it what was what the Prince – the State – had ordered them to do, and it was seen that the terrible violence of the war was a justified method – means - to extract a peace - the end - out of the Axis powers. Passionate Declarations invokes Machiavellian statesmanship throughout the collection of essays, and attributes “for the Prince” justifications to both those directly responsible for actions and those in command that gave their implicit acknowledgment that they would be carried out. Amongst other examples, he uses Watergate and the Bay of Pigs incident to illustrate the claim of “the means justifying the ends”.

Howard Zinn is clearly a socialist, and would likely define himself as such if presented with the opportunity, and his ideology is made clear throughout the essay Economic Justice: The American Class System. “Truth is it shouldn't mater how the rich got that way,” he remarks after presenting Carl Sanburg's poem “The People, Yes.” “If people have fundamental needs that are matters of life and death, why should we not, by taxation, take from people who will not suffer as a result of the taking, to meet those needs?”(164) He immediately follows this by asking the question of how the people with all of the money got to be that way; hard work? Contribution to society? Level of intelligence? Zinn uses a variety of details to demonstrate that none of these – common measures of how one can become successful in a capitalist economy – are actually responsible for why they got so much money. On the surface, it would seem that money is not distributed in our country (or world) according to any rational or just principle, with some of the hardest working and most devoted citizens, such as teachers and firemen, making among the smallest incomes in the country.

Zinn uses multiple sources of data by which he compiles his opinionated essays; first-hand witness accounts, newspaper articles spanning almost three hundred years, the Federalist Papers, and even for a brief moment the 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. It is difficult to find even a single paragraph in the entire series of essays (eleven in all) that doesn't contain at least one or two footnotes, indicated a cited material, and the depth of his evidence is compelling, which signifies one of my chief complaints with the work; it's hard to find things to disagree with. Although surely historians more advanced than I can point out the potential misquoting and misinterpreting of events that Zinn has potentially done, I had a great deal of difficulty finding holes in his logic. As stated earlier, the only point that he failed to convince me on entirely was that was is never just; although I have come to accept this view point in the majority of situations, I have difficulty understanding how specific situations ought to be dealt with, such as the invasion of Poland or even the more recent genocide occurring in Darfur, without a sort of armed intervention.

The essay that I found to be the most striking, and the one that contributed the most to my understanding of history, was titled simply Free Speech. Using examples from every spectrum of public life in the United States over the last two hundred years, Zinn systematically dismantles the concept that all Americans have an equal and guaranteed right to free speech. It was always my assumption that this right, which to me is more important than the majority of others, was sacrosanct and undeniable, although Zinn shows that this right is barely even that, and that it can be destroyed with the flimsiest of justifications. One of Zinn's strongest points is that “Money is power,” and that the only people or groups that have a genuine right to free speech are those that can afford to pay for it, whether it be through newspapers, television media, or any other type of information distribution. Although this is hardly surprising in a national arena, it surprised me to find that throughout the course of American history, the right of free speech on the behalf of an individual has been compromised many times, beginning two decades after the founding of our country with the Alien and Sedition Acts, which provided punishment for those that chose to criticize the government of John Adams.

I came into reading the collection of essays with a pre-determined biased; based on what my friend had initially told me, I was reasonably sure that I would not only enjoy but agree with the majority of things that Howard Zinn had to say, and after finishing the book and re-reading multiple passages, I find that this opinion has not changed. He presents his arguments in a clear and concise manner, and his style, while sounding at times jaded, provided an excellent platform by which to make his arguments. This collection of essays is one that could be picked up and understood (and enjoyed!) by anyone interested in history, and although a lack of exposure to themes included in the essays may initially be off-putting to younger readers, Zinn writes in such a fashion that will quickly bring them up to speed so that they can understand the arguments presented.

Although the essays found in Passionate Declarations tend to focus on the interest of those in power keeping those without power from attaining it, the broad scope of his arguments keeps what would otherwise quickly become a stale theme interesting and engaging. Through the exploration of the Civil Rights Movement, the breaking of labor unions/movements in the early 20th century, the communism/anti-communism situation of the cold war, and the critical factor of highly concentrated wealth in a minority of the population, Zinn provides for an everyman that is systematically disabled, crippled and maimed, and paints a grim picture of what life as a modern feudal peasant is like in America.

The Imposition of Conscience

This is without a doubt the best email concerning work that I will receive in my life:

A more interesting job situation:

Look: you should probably just hire me now so we can skip this whole boring process and get on with the humor.InboxX

Interviewing Strangers is Terrifying

wow.com Cover Letter

Various Updates - Stay Out of Trouble, Kids

Hooray!

Brevity is stupid.

The Veteran and the Supplicant: On the Methods and Implications of Modes of Address During the Freeport Debate

Fiction Contest

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Worldshift

Book Report/Criticism: King Leopold's Ghost

Fun With Grammar/The Trouble With King's English

Website!

Pretentious

Section 9 Sign

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Thomas verdict: GIVE US 2 MILLION DOLLARS YOU STOLE 24 SONGS

Lists

Poetry Grade Controversy omgomg

The Combat of the Essay

Composition Theory Essays + Gendered Books Idea Stuff

Riding the Black Wave: Black Metal as Dystopia

Obama, Machiavelli, and the Prince

The Punjabi and the Apostate

Satan Speaks

Regarding the Chosen People of God

On the Objectification of Subordinates in The Book of Saladin

Major Online Presence

Voice and Purpose: On Using an Argumentative Method in the Instruction of Composition

Step One

Drug Addicts, Con-Artists, Thieves and Liars: The Modern Writer

Solstice

Blades of Grass

Snowmen for a Nuclear Winter

The Debate: Part 1 - Affirmative Opening

The Debate: Part 2 - Negation Opening

The Debate: Part 3 - Affirmative 2

The Debate: Part 4 - Negation 2

The Debate: Part 5 - Negation Rebuttal

The Debate: Part 6 - Affirmative Rebuttal

Marx and the Bible

New McDonald's Sign:

Fuck you.

Game Criticism

Celebrity Cafe Listings

Internet Piracy and You

A beginning

lol tournament - Thoughts on Professional Gaming

On the Use of Setting and Theme as Characters

Interview (sort of) With Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun

God as a Desktop Commander

Book Review: Passionate Declarations by Howard Zinn

Look: you should probably just hire me now so we can skip this whole boring process and get on with the humor.
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