The Breaking Time

The Rundown: Quotable edition

For our first piece. This, in a nutshell, is why I distrust manifestos. Great satirical work from Kim Mok.

Knee-deep in journalism work (yes, readers, this comes as a total surprise, I know), so this edition of The Rundown will focus on some apt quotes and thoughts.

The following timely "there is no they" gem is from Eli Sagan's The Honey and the Hemlock, on the thorny relationship between democracy and paranoia:

The one psychological mode of action that almost everyone recognizes as intrinsic to the paranoid position (and, in its most exaggerated form, intrinsic to paranoia) is projection: "...the attribution to external figures of motivations, drives, or other tensions that are repudiated and intolerable in oneself." If we want to conquer the world, we announce that "they" are the ones who are so intent. If we cannot abide the tolerance that democratic society demands, we discover conspiracies whereby "they" are intent on overthrowing the democracy. Hofstadter points out how the Ku Klux Klan, violently anti-Catholic, imitated the Catholic Church by wearing priestly robes, erecting elaborate ritual structures, and creating a complex hierarchy. What the paranoid personality cannot do is to create a significant psychological distance between him- or herself and others. To a degree, there are no others, only friends (a part of me) and enemies (the projections of the bad, repudiated parts of me). Lacking an integrated, internal sense of self, the paranoid cannot conceive of an independent, possibly different, even indifferent, other. Democratic society, on the other hand, rests on the fundamental assumption of the independence and integrity of other people, that they be allowed wishes and desires and lives independent of what others may require of them. The paranoid cannot abide tolerance. People who do not believe in God must allow prayer in the schools; people who do not believe their identity is dependent on a piece of cloth; must recite the Pledge of Allegiance; women who get pregnant by mistake must have the child. Every democratic society has its frontier on which paranoid forces struggle with those of tolerance.

Sex positive feminist badass Susie Bright on some lessons from her years in the trenches. There are some major points here that many activists still need to learn:

I've been thinking a lot about the abortion fight that's going on right now. What if the women's movement had kept its eye on the ball? What if we had realized what was at stake? We saw it, the Moral Majority was being formed at this time in the '80s, and we should have been saying, "We need to pull together everyone we've got and strategize on these issues because we're in for the fight of our lives and our daughters' lives." But, no, we had a sectarian battle over pornography. The FBI didn't bother to infiltrate the women's movement, but if they had, they couldn't have come up with a better plan to sow the seed of destruction. I'll still go to places where a feminist activist gingerly approaches me, not quite sure we still have anything to talk about and worried about whether I'm on the right side. It's a little hard to keep that crap up at this point.

Since the world's had more than its usual share of terrifying uncertainty lately, I find the late Octavia Butler's A Few Rules for Predicting the Future more relevant than ever:

"So do you really believe that in the future we're going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?" a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I'd described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming.

"I didn't make up the problems," I pointed out. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters."

"Okay," the young man challenged. "So what's the answer?"

“There isn’t one,” I told him.

“No answer? You mean we’re just doomed?” He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.

“No,” I said. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

Amen to that. Good night, everyone. Dream well.

Poems for Friday: Prediction (The Future)

There are jetpacks, naturally. Art by Fred Freeman, 1966

Today's poem didn't strike me as a poem, at first. This piece by Mark Wallace is really more of a manifesto-style rant formed into epigrams. 

But it's too perfect, and too damn quotable, to pass up. Here's a brilliant stab into future-loves' jet-pack adoring heart:

In the future, we’ll plan the future better.

In the future, you can just become your TV.

In the future, your sexual partners will meet all the qualities on your checklist.

And this anxiety you’re feeling now? In the future you won’t feel it.

In the future, technology will always work, and there won’t even be weekend downtime for systems repair.

In the future, Friday night parties will never be boring.

In the future there will be less deadlines and they’ll be easier to meet.

In the future, all pollution will contain its own self-cleaning element.

In the future, if your house burns down, you’ll have another house by the time you get home.

In the future, your insurance policy will actually pay.

In the future, your friends won’t talk so constantly about everything they think they should already have.

In the future, no good deed will go unrewarded.

In the future people will like you just for who you are.

In the future, everyone will have their own sky marshal.

The Rundown: bodies on the highway

The body of a man killed execution style and wrapped in bin liners lies by the side of the Acapulco-Mexico highway November 16, 2006. REUTERS/Stringer

*Drug Wars A stunning set of pictures inside Mexico's drug war. Fair warning, the picture above is one of the least graphic in the set, which includes everything from blinged-out .45s and narco-saints to headless bodies hanging from a bridge. A harrowing look inside how ugly a drug-fueled civil war is.

*New Haven uses SWAT team to crack down on nightlife New Haven, Conn. has apparently decided people drinking and attending strip clubs is such a dire threat that it needs to use the SWAT team — with masks and assault rifles, no less — to round up the patrons, on a search warrant that produced a single, unrelated charge. This comes on the heels of Operation Nightlife where police started rounding up clubgoers and were widely reported to have attacked and tased a Yale student. Bunny Colvin's rant from The Wire — "call something a war, and pretty soon everyone starts acting like warriors" — comes to mind.

*LGBTIQQAA Yes, that's now the going abbreviation. I remember when it was gay and lesbian, then, around the time I was in college, LGBT became popular, and that was fine. But at this point, the acronym's stretching to the point of uselessness.

There is a term, however, that covers all those groups and their struggle for rights without resorting to a ludicrous degree of political correctness or tongue-twistingly garbled abbreviations: human.

*Catholics in US overwhelmingly support homosexual unions Many do this in direct defiance of their official hierarchy, and in percentages greater, in some cases, than the rest of the mainstream populace. A reassuring sign and a reminder that adherents to a creed don't always follow the attendant hierarchy. Again, the lesson is to be careful lumping traditions into too-neat boxes. There is No They.

*Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? A surprisingly decent series on the rise, hybridization and collapse of a subculture(s?) by Steven Hyden over at The Onion's AV Club. A good look at the way grunge and alt music linked into culture trends in one of the last eras before rock n' roll (along with mass music in general) splintered or become totally retro. Particular kudos for the way Hyden manages to balance enthusiasm with a realistic look at the limits of art.

*Experimentation, orgasms and the rise of anal sex Slate journalist William Saletan looks at changing sexual trends. Interesting material here on a social revolution steadily continuing in the background, though some of the "whoa" tone in Saletan's is a little puerile.

*'39 Queen doing an acoustic (what? yes!) presentation of one of the peppiest, saddest songs ever written about space travel:

Intermission, with music (and swords)

Yeah, it's been dry here this week, dear readers, and for that you have my sincere apologies. I suppose I could make the usual mumblings about being tied up with a heavy journalism workload or busy trying to set up an awesome film festival for my fellow Ashevilleans. All things that are nice and (relatively) sober.

No, those sneaky Germans at Silver Strain snuck out (terribly bootlegged) footage of what I and my terribly decadent friends have really been up to. But I admit the music is awesome. So while I recover from quaffing mysterious liquids out of smoldering goblets, enjoy. Blogging will resume shortly.

§ - TIMES 3 feat.☾∧† ◯ from § on Vimeo.

The Rundown: Quotable edition

Fuck yeah grammarpunk

I love quotes and everything to do with them and so it seems fitting to base this edition of The Rundown on telling passages that sum things up perfectly. Like so:

* "Ethnographic studies have found that, during possession, ‘spirits’ may offer opinions or solutions to moral crises and may protect the individual from trauma and despair during times of violence." Mozambique's plague of spirit possessions.

* "If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away."

Running away from slavery was once considered a diagnosable mental illness.

* "There's stories of property owners who have court orders demanding their properties be left alone and they come in and demolish them" In Montgomery, the city government is using a local blight ordinance to target low-income homes — some in the middle of renovation or construction — for demolition. The owners are often billed for the cost and, when they can't pay (now being homeless) the city seizes the property for resale. Governments used to be at least more blunt about their intentions.

* "For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine." John Adams trash talks Thomas Paine. Epically.

* "There is a transexual prostitute on every floor, to satisfy customer requests" An interesting photo series on the quasi-legal Turkish brothels.

* "Each time your heart beats, your body moves..." A beautiful video on the zen of firing a gun.

Everyone Forever Now - "Shooting a Gun" from Everynone on Vimeo.

Curious Search: Identity

Oh my, it's been far, far too long since I've done one of these image-binges-on-a-theme posts. So it's fitting that we start back with an excellent topic: identity. Below are a series of selected images that come up when that one, simple word's plugged into a search engine. 

Ironically enough, very few of these images had designer, artist or photographer identified. If you know anything about any of those I leave unlabeled, please let me know and I'll add 'em accordingly.

Enjoy!

A person prepares for gender reassignment surgery

Identity Cards, by Amili Gelbman

Madame Calivera's Corporate Identity Program, by Todd Schorr

Satoshi Kan, an amazing artist who tragically died today at 47, was no stranger to grappling with identity in a number of terrifying, beautiful and, in the end, utterly humane works. I'll close with the memorable opening of one of the best, Paranoia Agent.

Ray vs. the Modern World

Cats good. Internets NOT.

Oh, Ray Bradbury. You have not mellowed with age. He had these choice remarks at a recent event marking his 90th birthday:

Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama, but it's not about the economy, the war or the plan to a construct a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.

“He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week's worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events.  “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."

The man who wrote "Fahrenheit 451," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Martian Chronicles," "Dandelion Wine"and "The Illustrated Man" has been called one of America's great dreamers, but his imagination takes him to some dark places when it comes to contemporary politics. “I think our country is in need of a revolution."

“There is too much government today. We've  got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people and for the people.”

---

“We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

Bradbury wrote darkly about bookburning in "Fahrenheit 451," but he sounds ready to use a Kindle for kindling. “I was approached three times during the last year by Internet companies wanting to put my books" on an electronic reading device, he said. "I said to Yahoo, 'Prick up your ears and go to hell.' "

Yeah. Mr. Bradbury manages the amazing feat of encouraging political revolution because of a lack of a grand technological project which will make us immortal space gods, then tuns around and gives full throttle to the Luddite demons that have possessed him since way back when.

Is this hilarious? Yes. I can't help but being a little sad as well. Once upon a time, Bradbury was the ferociously cynical (yet humanistic) voice of a better sci-fi. He played a major role in igniting the medium's Deviant Age (also its Golden one, for my money) and his stories remain justly famed.

He's always been prickly, to put it kindly, but part of me always hoped that at some point he'd get past his prejudices and find some shred of the voice he once possessed in such abundance. We could certainly use it.

Nah. Chuck the machines, chuck the internet(s). The only majesty's in rocket ships. And we need to shoot the too-much-government motherfuckers who aren't getting us to Mars. STAT. Really, Mr. Bradbury?

On the other hand, perhaps he saw this:

Yes, take a moment. Then watch that again. Comedian Rachel Bloom hits one out of the park. "Fuck me, Ray Bradbury" is deliciously filthy and perfectly timed (see how she intones "you're a prolific author, Ray Bradbury"). It's unrepentant fun and, in its own strange way, a tribute to the wonder that the best of his works possessed while managing a catchy tribute to the kink side of geekdom. 

Meet the future, Ray. It loves you anyway.

The Rundown: It's the goddamn Breaking Time!

And Frank Miller is insane...

Frank Miller goes absolutely insane, with Batman, parts 1, 2 and 3: After coming off a news-writing binge that ended at approximately 7 a.m. I'm in the mood for some goddamn humor, and this hit just the right chord.

For those of you that don't know, Frank Miller, famed in earlier years for his classic, gritty remakes of Batman, has undertaken one final swan song, All-Star Batman and Robin, that personifies what he's become known for in his later works: utter stark, raving madness. This is well demonstrated by the panel above, which is actually fairly mild compared to the rest of the series.

Seriously, it's hard to appreciate the actual, sheer depth of the batshit (har har) until you actually see it for yourself. The I-Mockery version above is the perfect place to start, and as well as being fucking h

On a more thematic note, Miller is in the unique position of both helping to birth an artistic trend (grimdark superhero remakes) and play a major role in its final descent into clueless self-parody.

From Avatar to Fern Guilly in Five Easy Steps Also known as "White guy rebels against evil organization who wants valuable resource, joins indigenous tribe, hooks up with native hottie when someone's about to die. Hero bonds with important creature, wins over tribe, has a hippie moment and ends with (usually a repeated hippie bullshit line." This covers a surprising amount of stories, many making millions upon millions of dollars. I'll leave you to speculate why.

Legitimizing the illegitimate The excellent blog The Polis looks at ways of "legalizing" the slums that are a horrific, but often vital part of expanding urban centers around the globe. Essential Breaking Time reading.

Robots get sensitive skin An important technological step, though it further confirms my dire suspicion that technological progress will grind to a halt once researchers can fuck their robots.

The Story of Dune Fifty years ago Frank Herbert, a middle-aged journalist, sat down to write what would become one of the most innovative and influential sci-fi novels of all time. A surprisingly satisfying LA Times piece.

SEC charges Goldman Sachs with fraud And times just got real interesting. 

Blog Concerts The excellent Robin LeBlanc has dreamt an idea whose time has come, and a way to turn those writing binges into pure, transcendental art. Read it. These need to become a reality, soon.

All Tomorrows: Sovereign Bleak

I should have posted this earlier this week, when it went up, but the political season's heating up in Asheville and my job has kept me quite busy. This is happy news though. After a long, work-induced hiatus, I've returned to the Coilhouse blog with a piece close to my heart, on how the vision of a dark tomorrow became the norm, and some of the writers who made that happen.

A main reason this topic's particularly important to me is because I give sci-fi a little more credit than most, and not just because I happen to really like it. The idea of not just a few writers, but an entire genre striving to write about what happens next is a radically new phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. Isolated and wonky as sci-fi can often be, its very existence impacts the kinds of futures we envision and strive for (or fight against). It often functions as the proverbial pebble in our collective mental pond.

So, without further ado, read the whole thing:

I always thought danger along the frontier was something that was a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows.” A wan smile touched her face for a moment. “Only it’s not, is it? It’s not the same at all, because when it’s real you can’t go home after the show is over.”

“No,” he said. “No, you can’t.”

---

Story goes like this: there’s an emergency ship en route to a plague-ridden planet, carrying essential medicine. The pilot finds a stowaway; a young girl, Marilyn, who just wants to see her brother.

The pilot now has a problem: he has enough fuel to get himself to the planet, but no one else. Interstellar law is clear: all stowaways are jettisoned immediately.

But space captains are heroic sorts. Whatever harsh decisions the author puts in their background to prove their grit, this is still a story. This time will be different. Marilyn is the perfect, plucky sidekick-in-training; surely the pilot can figure out some way to save both her and the planet’s populace.

No. There is no solution. She says her goodbyes and is ejected, with “a slight waver to the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in passing, then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again.”

The above is from Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations. When it came out in Astonishing Science Fiction in August, 1954, it shocked the hell out of the magazine’s readership, used to the last-minute triumph of human ingenuity.

Godwin’s classic was only the beginning. The ensuing decades would see American sci-fi delve into realms unthinkable to its forebears. Desperate to shake off the genre “urinal,” as Kurt Vonnegut so succinctly termed it, writers first ditched one of the key assumptions: that the hero will always save the day. Maturity, in this view, meant uncomfortable truths. Often, it meant unhappy endings, not just for the protagonists, but frequently the entire world.

This is a scattershot story of how the bleak tomorrow came to reign, and how it changed our visions of the future.

Fashion on a leash

So a casting agency is trying not to be a casting agency but, apparently, a high-level subversion factory, despite doing work for unconventional types like Old Navy and Avon.

So they produce a "stylized take on the casting process," an oddly formal set of words that absolutely fail to describe the ominous witch's brew of arousal, group-mind claustrophobia, desperate striving and all-around deviance that is their one and only promo video, a work I also have to give credit for the best use of a Stooges song I've seen in ages.

So yes, if all of the above doesn't describe a product symptomatic of the lovely Breaking Time in which we live, I don't know what does. 

And yes, it does actually manage to be subversive: I still don't know quite what to think of the damn thing.