A Sense of Something Greater

To Infinity, and Beyond!

2011-12-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

I agree with Newt Gingrich about something.

Mark this date on your calender, because this is obviously the beginning of the Apocalypse.

I kid. But, it's no exaggeration to say I have never before agreed with Newt Gingrich. I think he's loathsome and repugnant. He espouses family values while cheating on his wives, divorcing one of them as she battled cancer, and distancing himself from his gay sister. He advocates unnecessary wars and child labor, and--by suggesting that presidents should be able to call members of the judicial branch to answer for rulings with which the president disagrees--he threatens one of the very foundations on which our democracy is built. He is vile.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself agreeing with him about something. You see, like Newt Gingrich, I believe we--America and humanity in general--need to return to the moon. Now, Gingrich and I have very different reasons for wanting to return to the moon. He, in line with his Republican credentials, wants to strip mine it. He wants to do to the moon what we have spent centuries accomplishing on this planet--harvesting what we want/need with little regard for the future. I'll be the first to admit that maybe a giant rock without an atmosphere is not necessarily the most fragile environment in creation, but I'm still repulsed at the idea of expending time and treasure simply to rape another planet(oid).

So, while I think Gingrich is right about returning to the moon, I think he's right for the wrong reason. Why do I want us to return to the moon? Because it's there. Because we can. Because we should.

Call me an optimist, but I think one of humanity's greatest attributes is its willingness, its near-obligation, to explore and expand. This expansion has often resulted in the decimation of populations and to the exploitation of geographies and resources. But for all that human expansion has gotten wrong, there is still something fundamentally profound and pride-inducing about the Polynesians who explored the Pacific Ocean, the pioneers who sought out a Northwest Passage to China, about the men and women who have established lives and destinies in places as remote as Svalbard and the Falklands, to name only a fraction of the total. The human willingness to say, "I don't know what's over that hill, but I'm going to find out" is indicative of a spirit that defies and exceeds our ability to describe in words.

Now, I'm not saying that we can't get something out of space exploration. One of the many reasons I heard as a child for why the Amazonian rain forests needed to be preserved was that an untold number of medical treatments might be hidden in those forests. Is it too extraordinary an argument to suggest that something in the atmosphere of Venus might just cure a devastating disease here on Earth? Or that some unknown element or mineral in Mars' crust could provide clean, sustainable energy for generations? "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

But space exploration can give us so much more. What began as a race to conquer and militarize the heavens in 1957, and later devolved into an international pissing contest between two socioeconomic models of governance, is directly responsible for satellite television, cell phones, portable computers, and more. Learning how to get to the moon becomes by default a process of learning how to better get to the moon. The technologies and the engineering prowess that develops as a result are not always for mankind's benefit--look at Reagan's Star Wars project--but they can still be greatly beneficial. Who's to say what other technologies we might develop as we learn how to move further and further out into the stars? Teleportation? Interstellar communication? Faster-than-light transportation? Yes, it all sounds like impossibilities from a science fiction film, but the nature of science fiction is that it often becomes fact. My cell phone does what communication devices did for the crew of the Enterprise in the original "Star Trek," and it's even smaller.

Stop for a moment and consider films such as "2012," On the Beach," and "12 Monkeys," films in which billions die and the survival of the human race is at stake. What happens if, Heaven forbid, such a thing were to happen? Cataclysmic geological events, nuclear wars, and incurable plagues have the potential to eradicate all human life on this planet. Imagine for a moment the totality of that loss. All that we have been and all that we could ever be ceases to exist in that moment. It is pure science fiction at this moment to suggest establishing human colonies on the moon or on Mars, but consider the importance to the totality of human existence if, after the loss of all life on earth, a few thousand people survived on Mars. Humanity could go on. This argument, that steps must be taken to ensure the survival of the human being, is not new. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen exists as a repository of various plant life in an effort to ensure mankind's survival in the face of a global catastrophe.

Finally, what of the possibility of life existing elsewhere? The presence of water is possibly indicative of the presence of life, and scientists have already established that there is water on our moon and on Europa, one of the Jovian moons. Consider the implications and the massive effects of the discovery of extraterrestrial life on our beliefs and on our supposed place in this universe. The discovery of even bacterial life on another planet is of profound importance, to say nothing of the possibility of finding, for example, fish living beneath the icy surface of Europa's frozen sea. Extraterrestrial life need not look like E.T. or Mr. Spock or (God help us) the "bugs" from "Starship Troopers" to qualify as the most tremendous discovery ever made in the history of humanity. The possibility that such a discovery might be made is reason enough to pursue that discovery until the day when/if we are proven to be the only life in the universe.

We as a people have already expended a great deal of time, material, treasure, and lives in the exploration of the cosmos. I am not so much of an optimist as to suggest that this would not also be the case in the future. Trillions of dollars would be spent to establish a base on Mars. Lives would be lost as fuel exploded on takeoff and capsules crash-landed on the surface of the moon. But lives have been lost in every ocean and sea on this planet. Lives have been extinguished at 30,000 feet when trans-Atlantic airliners have fallen from the sky. Lives and material must always be risked in any attempt to exceed our own capabilities. When the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded during reentry in 2003, one woman wrote to "Newsweek" asking why, when diseases like cancer continued to kill people on Earth, we should be spending so much money exploring elsewhere. I can only hope that were she to read this blog, she might be satisfied with my answer. If not, I can only offer these words from Buzz Aldrin:

"History will remember the inhabitants of [the twentieth] century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in sixty-six years, only to languish for the next thirty in low-Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve."

Were I blessed with the opportunity to set foot on Mars or on the moon--opportunities for which I would gladly risk and sacrifice my life; to die on Mars is to have experienced at least a moment on its surface--the minerals beneath my feet would be the furthest thing from my mind. I would just be glad we got there. The promise of space exploration for any reason is not reason enough for me to ever vote for Newt Gingrich. But I hope those who win in 2012, and beyond that in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 will see the necessity and the near-inevitability of our exploration of the cosmos.

I Feel Old

2011-12-14T18:21:00.001-08:00

I think my title basically says it all. But, I don't (just) feel old because I'm on the downward slope of my twenties. It's not (just) because I'm approaching the year 30 with not a little concern and trepidation. No, I feel old because I find myself living in a world which has aged me.

I get that life has always been one long stress test. I'm a "warts and all" kind of historian, so you won't find me pretending that there has ever been a golden age for humanity. When any group of people look back on some period as being their own personal golden age, their feelings are probably predicated on the fact that they exercised a great deal more socioeconomic/sociopolitical dominance in those times, with far less hindrances than they do now. So, in short, life has never been perfect, and I recognize that my being alive now has (hopefully) saved me from being executed in Elizabethan England, gassed in a Nazi concentration camp, or forced to live my life in fearful silence in 1950s America.

But I still feel old.

I am not one of these "Don't Tread On Me, America Hell Yeah!" kind of people. Quite the opposite. Yet despite this, and despite (or perhaps because of) my being a historian, I recognize in my mind a break between every moment in life before September 11, 2001 and every moment since. 9/11 occurred seventeen days before my nineteenth birthday, and just two weeks into my first semester as a college student. In many ways, I signify 9/11 as a pivotal moment in my maturation. It isn't really the moment at which I became "an adult," but for lack of a better descriptive term, that description should suffice. I think I was a pretty intelligent and aware guy up to that point: I had graduated with honors, I had done my senior research paper on the United States Supreme Court, and I had become very political during the 2000 Presidential Election, especially after my vote was stolen and an usurper became President of the United States of America. But for all my prior knowledge of politics and world affairs, 9/11 was and will always be a pivotal moment at which everything changed. It might very well have been similar to what eighteen year olds felt when Pearl Harbor was bombed, though I'm thankful I did not have to fear being drafted.

It may seem like I'm digressing, but I promise I'm not. What I'm trying to say here is that in some ways, I really do feel like my adulthood began on 9/11. And what has happened since? Eight years of President Bush. Unnecessary and unjust wars that have divided this country and squandered its wealth. American citizens left to suffer as their city slipped beneath the waves. Despots who have garnered votes by demonizing me and promising to keep me from being a full participant in this country. The continuation and strengthening of a mindset which attack intelligence and says that the ignorant, not the meek, shall inherit the earth. And they can have it, too, as the years since 9/11 have featured an increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, global warming, radiation leaks, and gas spills.

In short, I feel like too much has been pushed into too little a space of time. I think of 2007 in terms of decades passed rather than as a handful of years. I don't honestly know if this blog post is even meant to try and say something profound, or just give me an opportunity to put into words the sense of burnout and fatigue that I feel about life. (While also writing a new blog post for those [singular] who have requested that I keep writing.) Now, this isn't a cry for help. I have no intentions of doing anything stupid. But maybe this has as much to do with my feeling of age as any particular number reached in my longevity. Is it possible to reach a point where too much has happened in too short a period? Can one "collect" so many events in the form of memories, especially the bad and disheartening, that one feels like he is carrying the weight of a lifetime's memories?

Winter Moon by Dean Koontz

2011-07-05T15:22:00.001-07:00

I haven't been blogging much, but I'm really going to try and write more, at least for the rest of the summer. Here's a book review I did for my wonderful friend Sara's literary blog, Inspired Quill. I'll be back to you with more reviews and more of my thoughts.

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

Combining horror and science fiction can be a delicate endeavor. Science fiction can be used to parody reality, to show us our foibles and faults by showing us just how utopian our future can be, or how much more dystopian it can be if we aren’t careful. And horror, by reminding us of our own fears and mortality, is intense and even intensely fun. However, combining science fiction and horror creates a tightrope for any author to walk. The combination can quickly descend into the worst type of straight-to-DVD monstrosity--no pun intended--that Hollywood could ever hope to offer.

But have no fear, Dean Koontz does it well. I just finished reading his novel Winter Moon. Now, this isn’t Koontz’s newest work, and anyone who has read every one of his books might say it’s not his best, but it is the one I randomly purchased to help me kill a couple of hours before work one day last week. It’s a 472-page book, and by page 50 I knew I wanted to write a review of it for Inspired Quill.

In Winter Moon, husband and wife Jack and Heather aren’t living the perfect life. Far from it. Heather has been unemployed for almost a year, the city they and their son live in is becoming more and more dangerous every day, and, as the novel begins, police officer Jack suffers terrible injuries in the line of duty. Meanwhile, Eduardo, a retired widower living in rural Montana, realizes that something evil has begun in the nearby woods. A traveler from… some other place, some horrid place, has arrived in our world. Its mere presence produces terror almost tangible in its intensity. As Jack and Heather flee to Montana to escape the terrors of society’s devolution, they unwittingly approach a far greater terror than anything any human being can create.

I stopped reading Dean Koontz a few years back because I felt like I was reading the same novel over and over. But that is really only half-true. What I have discovered about Dean Koontz is that he’s a much better science fiction and horror novelist than a suspense novelist. This isn’t to say he can’t build suspense: I almost called in sick to work the other day because I couldn’t put this novel down. Rather, I’ve found Dean Koontz writes two types of novels: the science fiction/horror blend, and the sort of suspenseful, run-for-your-life survival novel that could happen to people in “the real world.” Examples of this include The Good Guy, The Husband, and Mr. Murder. Basically, it almost felt like Koontz was writing the same novel over and over.

When Koontz delves into the genres of science fiction and horror, as in works such as False Memory, Whispers, and Midnight, he’s a highly entertaining author. When he combines these two genres, as he did in Winter Moon and in the superlative The Taking--a present-day version of Noah's flood with both rain and monsters from the deepest levels of hell--he is a literary power to be reckoned with. This isn’t meant to be a love-fest. In fact, I feel like Winter Moon ended with a decidedly obvious lack of resolution, as if Koontz decided he was tired of writing the novel and was going to give himself an hour to finish it. Don’t let the absence of magic in the last two pages detract you, though. Winter Moon was an absorbing, engrossing read, and a testament to the skill and talent of this master of science fiction and horror.

Why Harold Camping is Bad for Faith

2011-06-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, I know. Things got crazy with the end of the semester, my new job, and my grandfather passing. Here's my new piece for my school's newspaper. Hope you like it.

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

Harold Camping, the evangelist and would-be Doomsday-prophesier, would like you to believe that he is a man of faith and belief, one who is so strong in his religious certitude that he can predict God’s plans for the end of the world down to the hour. And his faith--at least in himself if not necessarily in God--is so strong, he refuses to let his consistently poor track record deter him from making one Doomsday prediction after another. Having predicted a 1994 Doomsday that never came to pass, Camping then predicted the Rapture would occur last month, on the 21st. When 12:01 a.m. on the 22nd rolled around, Camping was nowhere to be found, until a short time ago, when he predicted the Rapture will actually occur this October 21st.

When you’ve been off by seventeen years, what’s five months?

Across the world, most people, both atheists and religionists of many faiths, saw Harold Camping for the crackpot that he is. I agree. I think he’s out of his mind, and it saddens and scares me that so many people quit their jobs, cashed out their savings, or otherwise irrevocably altered their lives because they believed this man’s delusions. But I’m not writing this piece to badmouth his now disappointed--and once more expectantly anticipatory--flock. I’m writing this piece because I don’t like the harm this supposedly religious man has done to spirituality.

I’m a believer, but that is the beginning and the end of what I’m prepared to say about my spirituality. As far as I’m concerned, faith is a private thing which should be shared with no larger a group than your family, close friends, and your congregation, should you happen to be a member of a church, mosque, temple, or other holy institution. Religious debates and discussions are interesting, even necessary, but actual public assertions of belief have always embarrassed me. I have even struggled at times with the idea of saying Grace before eating in a restaurant. Doesn’t the Bible say it is better to pray alone in one’s heart than to make a show of it before your neighbors?

But enough about my beliefs, or about the nature of worship. What I do want to say here is that, for all the mistakes that organized religion and fundamentalist beliefs have made and continue to make, I think that spirituality is ultimately a very beneficial thing. It provides believers with something that little else in this world can. I dislike and will loudly denigrate those who, by acts of terrorism or by picketing funerals, attempt to force their beliefs on others. But as to a private self-assertion of belief that helps one deal with the loss of a loved one, or with an illness, or with feelings of loneliness, I think that spirituality is a fundamentally good and powerful force.

But not an all-powerful force. Faith is malleable. For many, it ebbs and flows. It can be a tremendously fragile thing, even for those who seem to have the most to spare. Take, for instance, the man in Camping’s ministry who was being interviewed as the clock struck 6 p.m. on May 21st. Joyful expectation turned to a sad bewilderment very quickly. According to the reporter, the man kept looking at his watch, quietly muttering over and over, “I don’t understand.” As happy as I was to still be alive, my heart went out to those who had put their faith in the hands of a charlatan.

Will the world end someday? I’m prepared to bet my entire savings account it will. Whether from the Rapture, or a nuclear war, or the scientific inevitability that our sun will someday explode or burn out, this mortal coil is just that--mortal. But nobody can be certain about the how and when. Belief and faith can get us through the perilous unknowns of life, but it cannot give us some sort of psychic skill that enables us to see life’s hardships coming. Camping insists he has read the Bible from cover to cover, but he seems to have missed the part that said God--and only God--knows when the world is going to end. For Camping to suggest that he knows when the world will end, even when he has clearly shown he’s just swinging his bat at a small ball in a dark room, is the worst sort of religious fundamentalism.

Spiritual beliefs are funny in that they exist in a constant state of ambiguity. They can be so strong and so fragile, and so beneficial and so detrimental, all at the same time. I’m hoping that as October 21st approaches, this time, no one will give men like Camping the opportunity to inflict any more spiritual damage.

The Choice Between Healthcare & War

2011-04-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

It seems that anytime you turn on the television these days, unless you purposely and stringently do everything you can to avoid it, you end up hearing something said by someone about one of two things: money and medicine, or, more specifically, America’s financial difficulties and Medicare. We have been hearing about money issues for three years now, ever since the economic crisis of 2008, and we have become familiar with debates and arguments about healthcare since President Obama attempted to reform it in 2009. Now, the two have merged in the form of Republican calls for the government to slash funding to Medicare as an austerity measure that will, they say, ultimately help our economy.

I am not an economics major, and math has always been my least favorite subject, but I am prepared to go out on a limb and suggest that the Republicans may be right. If the government stops spending money on Medicare, then the government will have more money. It is simple logic: if I don’t spend the $20 in my wallet on books, then I have saved that $20 for something else. (I acknowledge that the intricacies of our massive economy are far more complicated, but, again, I am not an economist.)

But say that instead of spending that $20 on books for my education, or because I consider reading an enjoyable past time, I end up spending that $20 on gumballs. Many people, myself included, might think I wasted the money I supposedly saved by buying something so unnecessary and counter to my short- and long-term needs. In short, the $20 will eventually be spent, the only question is on what.

So, while cutting government funding to Medicare might actually save the government money, I am left wondering just what we might spend that money on, and what we already spend our money on. There is a lot of talk in Washington, D.C. about cutting spending “hither, thither, and yon.” We are continually being told that “nothing is off the table” including entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Every now and again, someone might suggest cutting defense spending, but more often than not, we hear vociferous exclamations that defense spending cannot be touched.

In short, cuts to government funded healthcare are permissible to solve our current financial troubles, but cuts to defense spending-- to our ability to build weapons, train soldiers to invade foreign countries, launch spy satellites--are anathema to the American government’s psyche.

America’s latest war--if you are having trouble keeping up with our war-making, I am talking about our war in Libya--began on March 19th of this year. On the first day of American aerial bombardment, 110 Tomahawk missiles were fired into Libya. At a construction cost of $600,000 each, those 110 missiles cost America $66,000,000. That is just construction cost, and not the cost of maintenance, storage, or the cost of training people to build, maintain, and launch these weapons. That’s $66,000,000 for one day of a war many Americans probably do not understand or want us to be a part of.

Meanwhile, as part of so-called austerity cuts, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona cut state funding to a program that paid for organ transplants for people who needed them but could not afford them. Brewer insisted that, though she regretted the necessity of cutting this funding, it was imperative that she do so in order to save Arizona’s economy.

For $66,000,000, 83 people could receive a heart transplant, 126 people could receive a liver transplant, 146 people could receive a single lung transplant, and 254 people could receive a kidney transplant. Assuming for just a moment that we had the necessary number of organs available, the American government could have saved hundreds of American lives on March 19th. Instead, we spent that money on another unnecessary war.

As the airwaves continue to be filled with often acrimonious back-and-forth arguments about the state of our economy and the need to cut such programs as Planned Parenthood, Medicare, and organ transplants for those without medical insurance, to say nothing of the continuing cuts to education, infrastructure, and the arts, we as a society are left with a choice. We are rapidly approaching a moment in time where we will have to decide who and what we want to be. Will we allow programs that care for the sick and the elderly to be crippled or destroyed while we can continue to make war across the world? Any society willing to sacrifice its citizens to ensure its military might is a society that cannot stand.

2011-04-21T12:57:00.001-07:00

US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning And WikiLeaks – OpEd

2011-04-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning And WikiLeaks – OpEd

Free Bradley Manning

2011-04-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

Pfc. Bradley Manning has been held in solitary confinement in the military brig in Quantico, Virginia, since May of last year. That’s eleven months of loneliness, fear, and misery, perpetrated against an American citizen by other Americans. For eleven months now, Manning has been deprived of his right to a speedy trial and his right not to self-incriminate (Because Manning cannot have a private conversation with any visitors--even his lawyer--he has no opportunity to speak about his case without fear of possibly incriminating himself in front of his guards.), and is being tortured.

Pfc. Bradley Manning stands accused of leaking classified military information to WikiLeaks, including the so-called “Collateral Murder” video which showed American military personnel gunning down Iraqi civilians and international journalists. I stress the word “accused” because Manning has yet to be tried for his alleged crimes. Yet, he is already being treated as if he were guilty. Manning sits alone in his small cell for 23 hours a day. He is not allowed visitors or mail. He is woken throughout the night, and is often forced to disrobe and spend hours sleeping or standing in the nude.

Again, Pfc. Bradley Manning stands accused of alleged crimes. It has not been proven in a court of law that he is guilty of the crimes in question. Despite the repeated violations to our civil rights perpetrated against us by our government in the last decade, the last time I checked, “innocent until proven guilty” was still the law of the land. However, this is apparently not the case for Manning. To justify his war, President George W. Bush reminded us over and over how brutal Saddam Hussein was to his people. To justify his war, President Barack Obama has been telling us over and over how we simply had to intervene in Libya to prevent Muammar Gaddafi from terrorizing his people. America, it seems, is exempt from the standards it holds others to.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is facing some serious penalties if he is found guilty. Execution for the so-called crime of treason is not impossible. However, one of the rallying cries around this situation is “Exposing war crimes is not a crime.” Dan Ellsberg, the man responsible for the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers that showed how President Lyndon Johnson had lied to the American people, has been arrested for protesting against Manning’s arrest. Former State Department official P.J. Crowley quit in protest, and both Representative Dennis Kucinich and United Nations official Juan Mendez are vociferously attacking the Obama administration for refusing to grant them private visits with Manning. Ultimately, time will likely reveal Manning as the hero, not the villain, of this particular story.

Not only is Manning’s treatment deplorable simply on an individual basis, but it serves as a powerful and frightening precedent that no democratic state can ignore. For the last decade, many Americans turned their attention away from the treatment of so-called “terror suspects:” mostly innocent men who were quite literally pulled off of city streets across the world, “renditioned” to foreign countries without their families even knowing, and then tortured in CIA and American military prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay. It was easy to ignore the plight of non-Americans from far-off places we had never heard of, especially when we were told--if we were told--that these were all very bad men who wanted to do us harm. We by-and-large let the Bush administration get away with it. The American people have historically had a very strong “them/us” way of looking at the world, and as long as torture was happening to “them,” it was alright by “us.”

But now it is happening to an American. The United Nations--that “monolithic would-be world government” that so many Americans fear--has actually stepped forward to try and protect this American from the brutal and criminal behavior perpetrated by his own government. We as a society cannot sit back and do nothing. We must stand up for those “inalienable human rights” that the Constitution guarantees us and Pfc. Bradley Manning, or we might someday find ourselves in that tiny cell.

Free Bradley Manning now!

Debt & Cote d'Ivoire

2011-04-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Following is my upcoming column for my school's newspaper:

Before sitting down to write this column, I went online to check the latest news coming out of Africa. I was going to write a column arguing passionately, and, I hope, convincingly, about the need for Western intervention in the African country of Cote d’Ivoire. So you can rightly assume that I was both surprised and delighted to read on The New York Times website that the United Nations and France had begun military strikes against the forces of former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Former president Gbagbo lost his campaign to remain president of Cote d’Ivoire, a former French colony, last November. The election, certified by several international agencies as fair and honest, awarded the presidency of this cocoa-rich nation to Alassane Ouattara. Unfortunately, Gbagbo refused to accept his loss, and held on to power. Since then, the situation in Cote d’Ivoire has only deteriorated. Negotiations floundered, Ouattara set up his own government in his U.N.-protected hotel room, and, eventually, armed fighting began between forces loyal to each side. Cote d’Ivoire was descending into violence between pro-Ouattara supporters in the largely Muslim north and pro-Gbagbo supporters in the largely Christian south. This violence culminated recently in the massacre of 1000 civilians in the town of Duekoue, a dangerous step towards genocide. (Both sides deny being responsible for this massacre, though it does look like Ouattara’s forces are responsible.)

So I am very happy that France and the United Nations have stepped in to do something about it. France and the United Nations have commenced air-strikes against military and political targets in Cote d’Ivoire. I am glad that someone in the Western world realized they had a duty to do so.

Yes, I said a duty. You see, I advocate Western intervention to prevent genocides not just because I believe those who can prevent genocide have a responsibility to do so, and not because I am some naïve bleeding heart who does not understand the so-called “real world.” My insistence on aid and intervention for Cote d’Ivoire comes from my belief that the United States and Western Europe have a duty to help places like South America and Africa because our ability to do so, our wealth and all that it buys for us, has been made at the expense of these places.

We as a society often try to forget about the misdeeds of our past, to pretend things were not as bad as they truly were, or to try to distance ourselves from what we claim to be the mistakes of our ancestors, and therefore not our responsibility. This is a fallacious argument. Much of the wealth and power that this country sits on and uses to mold so much of the world into the shapes we find most pleasing has come to us because of what we and European imperial powers were able to take from places like Africa. The Western world robbed Africa of its people and its resources, yet we assume that having given African countries their independence--a gift that we did not give but which we gave back--somehow absolves us of responsibility for the repercussions that African nations continue to suffer through.

By initiating military strikes against the despotic and violent forces of Laurent Gbagbo, France has made a bold step towards repaying the debt it owes its former colony and might just save a lot of lives in the process. I hope, but do not expect, that we might see a greater response from the Western world towards the prevention of genocide and violence around the world, especially towards countries that we owe so very much to.

Choice

2011-04-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

I've said in several previous blogs--usually just before bitching and moaning about something--that I don't want to use this blog just to bitch and moan about things. But I'm going to knowingly and purposefully make an exception right here, because in a way this is kind of a continuation of my previous blogs about the problems I see with academia and the educational process.

So here goes: I don't like being told what to study.

I can understand if I've already lost my readers to a chronic condition of eyerollitis, but I beg you to bear with me for a second. I can understand that at a fundamental level, much of what we're told to study is just that: what we're told to study. Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I have a serious problem with so-called "core classes." But I refer there to classes outside of one's areas of interest, such as a college algebra class forced on an art major, or a music appreciation class forced on a physics major. Within your department of study, there will, of course, be subjects you have to take. For instance, I am currently in Social Theory. I don't like it, but I completely understand why my department says, "You cannot graduate from our sociology program without having a basic understanding of the history of sociology and its great contributors." Deal. Done and done. I get that. While I don't like my Social Theory class, I understand why I have to take it. (Readers will likely remember my gripes about being forced to take Teaching for Sociology when I have no desire to be a teacher. I have to admit that my thinking has changed slightly, and I can recognize that a class founded on the notion that a Ph.D. does not necessarily make you a good teacher is a good class to have. Oh, dear. I wonder if that means three months from now I won't agree with this post.)

Moving on.

While I can understand why I'm being made to take Social Theory, I don't like the class' set-up. We have absolutely no choice on what we want to study. Each of us is required to present on a prominent historical social theorist, and then write a term paper on said theorist. This is pretty big--you're depending on your knowledge of a theorist for two important grades. Yet, the professor arbitrarily assigned each of us a theorist.

I can remember in one 300-level undergraduate history classes being given a list of six paper topics and being made to chose four. In another class, we had to write a final paper and prepare a five minute lecture on a subject, but we were free to choose that subject. In my history seminars at the 400-level, we wrote 25-page papers for our final grade, on subjects, again, or our own choosing. In my theater classes, we were often able to choose our own monologues and scene work. And this was all at the undergraduate level.

Now, we're at the graduate level, and we seem to have less choice than we did as undergraduates. That's not the way it is in every class. For my Race & Ethnicity class, and in my Gender Theory class last semester, we were required to hand in a certain number of response papers, but we could choose which books we wanted to respond to. In my Social Research Methods class last semester, the culmination of our entire semester's work was a research project we chose to conduct. (Mine was on sexism in "Star Trek: The Original Series.)

As I finish up this argument, though, I realize it might have more to say about the professor than about the nature of academia or even the department. Come to think of it, I think he might be the oldest professor in the department. And he is the guy who told me to stop "reminding" people that I'm gay.

Hmmm.... I seem to be finishing up this blog with a much different point-of-view than I started it. The transformational power of self-reflection, I guess.

An Awful Thing Happened at the Chevron Today

2011-03-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

I stopped off at the Chevron gas station to purchase some chicken and eggrolls for dinner. (A subsequent blog on my poor eating habits shall follow.) I walked into the station just as an African-American gentleman walked out. I stepped up to the counter to place my order, at which point the Caucasian girl (I use "girl" not for derogatory reasons, but because she couldn't have been out of high school yet.) asked me, "Have you ever noticed that about those people?"

Feel free to stop reading and go for some chocolate, a warm bath, or a massage. Whatever it takes to get that crawly feeling out of your skin.

My first response came from a shocked and uncomfortable place: "What people?"

Her response: "Black people."

I was officially freaked. So many things went through my head in a split-second: how much sociology could I teach this racist heifer; oh my God, she assumes that because I'm white I'll agree with her, or at least let her off the hook; do I say something and risk a fight; do I just turn around and walk out? (Were this to happen again, that is what I would do.)

My (verbal) response: "No, I haven't noticed that."

Her response: "Well, maybe it's because I'm in school."

At this point, I just said, "Can I get my chicken and eggrolls, please?" She must not have liked my tone and/or my lack of agreement because she really starts smacking the keys on the cash register. What I wish I had said was: "You know, your comment reveals to me that you're a racist person, and I know African-Americans can see that in people. If he gave you attitude, which is not something I'm prepared to assume, then it likely came as a result of the negative attitude he was sensing from you." Have you ever noticed how the best comebacks come (back) too late to say them?

The African-American man in question came back in to complete his transaction, and stepped up to the counter beside me. I was putting my receipt in my wallet, so I apologized for being in his way. He responded with a very nice tone that I was fine. I told him to have a good night and left without saying another word to RB (racist bitch).

I don't feel like I did enough. It makes me kind of sick to think that if someone had said something anti-gay in front of me, I would have responded more viscerally than to this racist comment. Would it have been better if I had taken her on? Would it have changed anything? Should I have at least tried? Two people I have spoken to about this (one Caucasian, one African-American) say that I handled things ok. I hope so. I will say this: can anyone come out of such an awful situation feeling like a winner?

Justin Bieber

2011-03-10T10:36:00.001-08:00

Ok, it's time I say something about Justin Bieber. As a sociology student and an employee at a cinema where the Justin Bieber movie has been huge, it seems only logical that I should have a little something to say.

I don't hate Justin Bieber. In fact, I think he's pretty talented, and when he's a little older and stops singing this bubblegum pop crap, he might actually make some really good music. Nor do I hate Justin Bieber because of his popularity which, I think, is the reason why at least 49% of those straight males do hate him. I wouldn't mind being as popular as he is, but I don't want the sort of popularity that comes from being idolized by millions of prepubescent tweenies.

But I do have a serious problem with Justin. Although I approve of and agree with Western European age of consent laws--16 years of age--I have a real issue with the sexualization of a 16 year old, especially by so many older women. I mean, it's cool for a 16 year old girl to have a crush on a 16 year old boy, but some of these mothers seem to be moving into cougar territory. All well and good on a theoretical level, but, still..... I mean, the kid isn't old enough for chest hair yet. And it is this sexualization of Justin Bieber which leads to another problem: Bieber's fan base is not made up exclusively of 16 year olds and older. Believe me, I've seen plenty of eight year old girls come out of the movie crying. So, Bieber becomes not just a sexualized 16 year old, he's a sexualized 16 year old role model, whether we like it or not. So what he does and says has a lot of impact on young girls. So imagine my distaste when, out of curiosity, I checked out the music video for Bieber's "Baby." Perhaps I'm overacting a bit here, but as the uncle to four beautiful nieces, I wasn't best pleased to see how not only are the females in this video objectified as sexualized love interests for Bieber, but that Bieber takes it upon himself to grab these young girls as if he has every right to lay his hands on them. Check out the link and tell me what you think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4

Before I finish, I'd just like to ask a question: if a 16 year old boy walked into your place of business, stripped off his shirt, and started thrusting his crotch in suggestive ways, what would you do? Well, for some reason, when Justin Bieber did it, they made a movie about him.... Again, I think he has talent, and I will not allow myself to hate him because he is richer or more popular than I am, but there's something... off about this.

Defining Myself

2011-03-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

I was at a reception tonight at the home of one of my professors. It was a really awesome house: it was beautiful, filled with books, and there was even a "Lord of the Rings" inspired room. I'm not a LOTR fan, but I love the respect for fantasy and science fiction. (They had a lot of "Star Wars" stuff as well. I'm more into "Star Trek," but, again, I love the respect for science fiction.)

But with so many books, pictures, and objects that seem to define the people who live there, it left me thinking about myself. Who am I? If I had a house of my own--as opposed to a single room in my parents' home--what would it say about me? What do I have to say about myself?

Well, I like the idea of having an office or library, with a lot of books. I'm hardcore about what I put on my wall. I've never been one to just tape up posters or use cheap plastic frames. I've always had things professionally framed--I think I'd have a nice looking house. I'd hope to fill it with a lot of pictures of friends. I'd want lots of items from my travels around the world, and the centerpiece of my living room would be the century-old chest my grandmother has said I could have when she goes to Glory.

Ok, but the big thing here is not about thinking about what some theoretical house would look like. Rather, I got a real sense of what my professor and his wife were like by looking at their home. It left me wondering what my home would say about me. I guess what I'm struggling with is, I don't know what to say about myself. But let's give it a try.

I'm an avid science fiction fan, which I think says a lot about how I see the world. I love to travel. I'm passionate about life in general. I'm hyper. I talk a lot--but I have a lot to say. I'm sensitive, sometimes to the point of needing excessive outside validation. (Need to work on that.) I am fiercely loyal to my friends--and I'm willing to make friends with just about anyone. I'm open-minded. I care about the world and its people. I'm intelligent. I'm a foodie. (Need to work on that, too.)

Well, let this not become a "pat-myself-on-the-back fest." This is kind of a rambling post, I guess, fueled as much by the need to blog for the first time in almost a month as for anything really worth saying. But I really was inspired by my professor's home to try and figure myself out, to define myself and maybe, just maybe, come to realize just how cool I can be. :)

On the Horns of a Dilemma

2011-01-15T21:04:00.001-08:00

I'm on the horns of a dilemma. It's a rather bourgeoisie dilemma, but it's still serious to me.

I love to read, and for most of my life I've loved collecting books. I've been very proud of my collection(s), especially my old school Star Trek books and my complete collection of the works of Agatha Christie. Sometimes, my collecting has gotten me into serious trouble. As my readers will already know, I'm bipolar, with more than a little OCD. Often, I couldn't stop myself from buying a book--sometimes for no other reason than because I liked the cover--and more often still, I couldn't stop at one. I opened a house account--basically a bar tab--at the local bookstore, and racked up far more debt than I am prepared to tell anyone, even you....

In spite of my pride over my book collection, I sold off most of my books before leaving for England last year. It was more money in my pocket, and since I didn't intend to move back to the US, I didn't think it fair to expect my parents to mail hundreds of books to me.

Well, I had no choice but to return to the US. My Star Trek and Agatha Christie novels are all in storage in my closet, and the books that I couldn't bring myself to sell fill half of one shelf. I have a lot of shelves in my room, so it makes for more than a little empty space. But that's not the problem. The problem is, I still love to read, and want to collect books, both fiction and sociology texts to augment my master's courses. But, I'm a little worried about becoming a collector again. At the same time, I'm a little worried about not becoming a collector again.

Here's the thing: to collect books is to invest a lot of money, money that could be better spent in savings, in advance of my (triumphant) return to England. Plus, what am I to do with a ton of books that I can't exactly take with me on the plane? How much money will have to be invested to mail them to my new address? How do I balance these concerns with a desire to buy buy buy, especially in light of the fact that I can't always be trusted to not do just that--buy buy buy!!!

Alright, those are all technical problems, with easy answers, if I could just become more decisive. The real problem I guess, the thing that actually weighs on my mind enough for me to write this blog entry, is that this is not just a debate between collecting books or saving my money. I guess the real debate is about what sort of person I want to be. I want to be a book collector, someone with a really impressive collection, with shelves drooping under the weight of this collected literature and knowledge. I want someone to come into my home someday and be overawed, or at least slightly agog, at my collection, and for them to see me through different eyes when they realize how much time and energy I have invested in making myself as intelligent as I possibly can be. But I also want to be someone who doesn't place a lot of importance in material things, who isn't tied down with concerns about inanimate objects that can often--like right now--be troublesome things. I like the idea of not having much to my name, of being a person who travels light and can move back to England with two suitcases and a smile.

So you see why this is gnawing at me, and maybe not without reason. It's not just about the actual buying of books--though the possibility of binge buying will always be a concern. I'm really concerned about what sort of person a collection of books might say about me. Perhaps I'm missing the forest for the trees. I see the irony in this obsession over my possible obsession with material goods. I'm laughing on the inside, I assure you. But seriously, I've been obsessed with buying books, and I've been obsessed about not buying books, and I can't for the life of me see if one obsession is better than the other. (I think I've said "obsession" more times than any ad for "Obsession" perfume!) So.... This is one of those entries where I hope someone will comment, even if it's just to tell me to take a deep breath and calm the hell down. Like I said, a very bourgeoisie dilemma. But one I'd like to figure out.

The Queen's Speech

2011-01-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, I just made a self-deprecating gay joke.

Moving on....

I've found myself in several conservations in the last year about the British royal family. I've had this conversation with family, friends, classmates and fellow Fulbrighters. Admittedly, it's not a topic on everyone's minds these days--we'll save that for nearer the royal wedding. Usually, I'm the one bringing it up, be it vocally or on Facebook, with most of my viewer audience more likely amused than intrigued, though it's always fun when a debate starts.

During any given conservation about the royal family, I tend to be loyal towards the royal family. During my time in England, I had many a surreal moment when I found the British citizens I spoke to were either indifferent or even opposed to the royal family. (On one humorous occasion, some friends laughed aloud--with, not at--me when I mentioned my curiosity about what the Queen might be doing that day. As one of them said, "I don't think most Brits worry about the Queen.") Some others--including a dear friend whose opinion I might disagree with but still respect (Love you, D.)--actually do think about the royals, but not with my beneficence. Indeed, some have advocated the dissolution of the monarchy, expressing discontent with a system that bestows such grandeur on an unelected group of people who--and I admit this freely--are in no way inherently better than the rest of us.

And, yes, I see the exquisite irony of Prince Charles' car being attacked by young British citizens protesting tuition hikes. And, yes, I am familiar with my history and with Henry VIII's six(!) wives and George III's blue piss. And, no, I don't like Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, that much.

Yet, I still defend the monarchy with all my might. And it's not just the British monarchy that I will exhaust myself in defense of. Though I know very little about the Dutch, Danish, Spanish, or Japanese (To name but a few.) monarchies--"Do any of them receive as much international attention as the British monarchy?" I ask rhetorically--I will still argue on behalf of the idea of the monarchical system every time.

I understand the arguments my friends and colleagues have made about the monarchy. (Except my mom's; she hates Queen Elizabeth II on very personal, and ultimately very unreasonable, grounds.) It is undemocratic. It is a drain on national economies. It is a system reminiscent of bygone eras and less-than-glorious offenses. But it is because of this last reason that I defend the royal institution.

I'm a historian. I've read many books about history, I've been to several famous places such as the Eiffel Tower and Auschwitz, and I've been to more museums than I can remember off the top of my head. (Shout outs to the Occupation Museum on Guernsey and the Maritime Museum on Jersey!) I like to read, I love to travel, and I've spent many a happy hour in various museums, but these can all quickly become very staid activities. The book is merely a reminiscence, often by someone who never experienced the history in question to begin with. Stonehenge, Auschwitz, and Leicester's very own Bradgate Park are places of historical importance preserved for future generations, but they have left the very solidity of their importance in the past. Museums are, when we reach to the heart of the matter, large storage chests for items which, like these previously mentioned places, are important for the role they serve in reminding us of the importance they once had. I don't mean to sound negative about any of these three examples. To the contrary, these are all important for a historian's education and for the continuing narration of the human experience. No society should be without them.

The monarchy is a living representation of history, one that by its very existence serves as a living reminder--of the past. Though the royal bloodline has been... shaped in such a way that the current monarch is not a direct descendant of Elizabeth I or any number of predecessors on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II stands as the representative of a thousand years of history. That history has not always been a glowing one, but just as you cannot judge me because of my segregationist great-grandfather, or my German coworker because of the sins of his predecessors, you cannot sit in judgment on the Queen simply because of the failings of those who have been dead for centuries. (Yes, I see the trap: one can argue it's not the queen that is being vilified but rather the institution, which is exactly what I am defending. But can institutions not change? The Democratic Party in American politics was once the party of racism and segregation, and now our first African-American president is a Democrat.)

Perhaps there is really not much in the way of tangible, reality-altering ways in which the monarchy--any monarchy--can be made relevant in today's society. Perhaps the importance of a monarchy exists now only in such theoreticals as I have given here. (Perhaps Prince Charles should abdicate the throne so that an infusion of young blood can revitalize and increase the popularity of the monarchy. No, no perhaps about that one. Abdicate! Queen Camilla? I think not.) I adhere to the idea that the pomp and romance and sheer enormous weight of almost a millennium of history that Queen Elizabeth II wears with dignity upon her shoulders, and which I hope her grandson and his children will one day wear, as well, should remain with us for as long as we as a society commemorate, honor, and remember our histories.

--not worth thinking of a title--

2010-12-21T23:09:00.000-08:00

You know, I can't for the life of me get to sleep tonight. My mind just keeps racing for some reason.

You should know, and I deserve to tell you, that I am consumed with so much anger and ill-feeling towards you, I almost feel like I'm choking. It's not about your breaking up with me--hell, we were never even in anything to begin with, were we? No, it's the trite way in which you did it, the way in which you calmed my nerves by insisting you liked me and that things were going well, and the mind-fuck way in which you went from saying you saw us having a happy future to saying you just wanted to be friends in the space of less than one goddamn hour.

Your timing couldn't have been better, if, that is, you were aiming for the worst timing possible. To do this the first time I see you after we were intimate makes me feel like a whore, and to have it happen after you came back from your trip makes me feel like I spent all weekend as nothing more than a sheep unknowingly waiting for his turn in the slaughterhouse.

I never thought I'd see you again after meeting you for the first time in the theater. So when I saw you in Kevin's office, my first thought was, "This is going to be something special. This, I dare say, is meant to be." Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know exactly what it was you just took a shit on. You took my belief in "meant to be" and crushed it. None of my other relationships had that feeling, and I defined my happily ever after in relation to it. Now, I can't ever do that again. The next time something fortuitous like that happens, I'll be questioning and doubting it from the beginning. I'll never be able to find security and contentment in that feeling again.

You walked into my life a dream and walked out of it a nightmare. Go "find yourself." Go see what it means to be on your own, while I undertake the unenviable task of having to tell my friends exactly what happened when each of them takes their turn at asking me how it's going with you. My love is too fairy tale to be thrown back in my face, and I hope someday you think of me and realize just what you threw away. I am by no means perfect, but I have the passion, the sincerity, and the loyalty to make someone very happy. I hope someday it rips your heart out to know you won't be that someone.

I think I might actually be able to get to sleep now.

Take This Job and....

2010-12-12T19:16:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been about a month since I last blogged. I've had all these ideas running through my head about what to write--President Obama, "Burlesque," my idea about how there should be a Pulitzer prize for blogging--but right now I just don't feel like writing. I do feel like I have to break through that somehow, to get over it and write about something, but I'm too distracted and angry right now to write about anything other than that distraction and anger, and I continually promise--a promise I sometimes keep or fail to keep--not to use this blog to complain.

I will ask this: what can workers expect from a job? I was told today that I am paid a wage and that if I don't like what I'm expected to do for that money, then I can just find another job. I'm proud to say I didn't just take that with a smile. Rather, I told him that a job where your only option is to take it or leave it is no job worth taking. What sort of a choice is that? I called our corporate office some weeks ago about the issues I and my coworkers are facing, and they wouldn't do anything about it because I wouldn't give them my name. Where is the job security in such an arrangement?

My overall problem with my job is the favoritism shown to some members of staff--usually the ones who don't really put forward much of an effort--and the way that members of management speak to us. I called them on that today, and it degenerated pretty quickly. My mistake might have been talking to all four of them together. One violent dog can be handled--a pack is another matter. I don't want to go into too much detail--that would only anger me more. Suffice it to say, it was an unpleasant experience. I was basically told that my complaints were completely baseless, and that, as I said before, I could take it or leave it.

I choose neither option.

I've e-mailed our regional manager, who returns from vacation on Tuesday, about a meeting. I intend on telling him everything--from how our general manager is too nice to be firm with her substandard assistant managers to how certain coworkers get away with murder to how our too-large management staff (They have two excess managers.) steals our hours to ensure they get their own while still making payroll (They cut every member of the floor staff today except myself, while four managers were on the clock. They still expected me to do everything, while they sat in the office and goofed off, as they so often do.)--and letting whatever happens happen.

The good thing about having three jobs is that you're not terrified of losing one of them.

Am I out of line to think that, even in a $7.25 an hour job, workers deserve to be treated with some respect? To not have managers whose heads are swollen with this false impression of success and power (It's a cinema in Oxford, Mississippi, for God's sake.)? To not have someone eight years younger than you and nowhere near as smart as you acting like you're her bitch? Hmmm...?

I have been advised by a friend and coworker whom I trust that my best option is to simply stop caring. Considering no assistant manager can fire me on the spot for anything less than a very serious offense, it seems I must start exuding an attitude much like some of my coworkers--sadly, the ones I'm not very fond of because of said attitude--that what you want and what I want are two very different things, and you aren't getting what you want. I have two other jobs to keep me going if worse comes to worse, so I guess it's time to start acting badly on this one. (Let me just tell you that I am, indeed, very disturbed by what this job is doing to me, but I'm just rolling with the punches to the best of my ability.)

I have been told that writing negative things about the theater is grounds for dismissal. So, is it too much to ask for a job where my freedom of press is respected? ;)

Skyline; My Thoughts

2010-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, so after waiting months with near-fatal levels of anticipation, I saw the new Brothers Strause film, Skyline. About two weeks before the film premiered, I was finally able to find a preview of decent length. Before, all I had seen was a 40-second long (approx.) preview with Dan Rather's face, some pretty blue lights, and a special effects shot that was so short in duration, I didn't realize those were people being sucked into the ship until I saw the movie poster at work. Imagine my disappointment when, upon finding this longer, more informative preview, I was left with the nagging feeling that this movie was going to suck royally. (And I'm not talking minor league Prince Harry wearing a Nazi costume at Halloween, I mean King George III's blue piss and Revolutionary War royally.)

Despite this painful premonition, I still saw the movie on opening day. (I actually saw three movies that day, but I made sure Skyline was first.) The first ten minutes were nothing special, but that was ok. We were getting some exposition, some needed information about the characters. Cool, fine, all well and good. But get to the aliens, please.

I should probably warn you this blog is made of spoilers. And awesomeness.

Anyway.... The aliens attack. In a really slow fashion. They attack, then they disappear for a while before returning in full force. Ok, no problem, the Brothers Strause are building tension. Coolio. Then we're all over the place between the roof, the apartment, the parking garage, the pool, back to the apartment, then back to the roof. A trifle redundant, but I can live with that. I think that's probably what would really happen in an alien attack. A lot of people would be running back-and-forth trying to figure out what the hell to do.

The movie features some really awesome effects. There's an aerial battle over Los Angeles, which concludes with a nuclear bomb obliterating downtown Los Angeles and, apparently, the alien spaceship. The spaceship somehow manages to rebuild itself in what was a pretty wicked sequence of shots. The aliens manage to make their way into the apartment where four of our remaining protagonists (two were killed in the parking garage) are hiding. Two have already left for the roof, so they survive long enough to see a second aerial battle over Los Angeles. (This one goes no better than the first.) Our protagonists, Jarrod and Elaine, have no choice but to accept their fate and hold onto each other as they are sucked into the ship.

The movie ends (or should have ended) with a shot of alien ships in New York City, Hong Kong, and London, suggesting that the entire world is under attack by this unstoppable foe. Then we cut to a shot inside the ship where we see people's brains being harvested for use as batteries for alien bodies. Pregnant women (including Elaine) are taken to special facilities where their fetuses are harvested. The whole alien set-up is a terrifying amalgamation of technology and biology that would have the Borg whimpering like a kicked puppy. (Assimilate this!)

That's where the movie should end. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Skyline has received mostly negative reviews, and Rotten Tomatoes rates it an abysmal 13%. It's more Battlefield: Earth than it is Independence Day, with the sheer boredom of 2001: A Space Odyssey thrown in at times, minus 2001's cinematic importance. Yet, I think it deserves more than 13%. The thing I really liked about this movie was the fact that it was a pretty real depiction. I don't mean that real-life aliens (The truth is out there.) will look and act exactly like that. No, what I mean by "real depiction" is that it was faithful to the idea that any extraterrestrial life that is advanced enough to get here will, obviously, be far more advanced than we are, and woe betide us if they aren't friendly.

Don't get me wrong, I like Independence Day and (parts of) War of the Worlds. (And the idea of a virus or bacteria killing alien visitors actually seems quite plausible.) The problem is, our victory over such forces is akin to the victory of ants against an elephant. The ant may have an itchy foot for a while, but it's the ants that are crushed. In the film's last few shots, the aliens can be seen over major cities all over the world, and nothing we've done has been able to stop them. Plus, whatever they are doing with us is truly horrific. Forget the wholesale slaughter of cities in Independence Day, the personal viciousness of Alien, or the harvesting of blood in War of the Worlds. What's going on in these alien ships is like all three of those combined and on crack. At the very least, Skyline is more visceral than these other films.

This is the power of Skyline. It's the one thing that it gets right--total A+. The sheer enormity of the alien attack, its personal effects on the individual, and the horrific nature of what the aliens have planned for us suggests a reality in which Earth doesn't win. I like that. It's far more likely, and I like it when writers and directors are brave enough to create movies where we don't win. (As far as I know, they are few and far between, but see the 1959 and 2000 versions of On the Beach.) That's what Skyline gets right: we are toast, (Or possibly the batteries in the toaster.) and in the most horrific of ways.

So imagine my disappointment (I use that phrase a lot. I really need to become a glass half full kind of person.) when I find out that Skyline is supposed to be the first in at least two, and perhaps an entire series, of movies. You see, at the end of this movie, Jarrod's brain is too powerful for the alien body, and he is able to take control of it and rescue Elaine. The movie ends with him carrying her off, whether to safety or death we do not know. I can handle an ending with the two of them moving off into the "sunset," but I don't want a series of movies that possibly has Earth winning this war. Be bold! Have Earth lose. Skyline's only strength comes in the dark reality of its ending. Its strength comes from being a stand-alone, solo movie.

Keep it that way.

Writing

2010-11-10T19:22:00.001-08:00

I love to write.

I never thought having a job where I wrote on demand would be so challenging. At the Ford Center, I'm responsible for writing blogs about upcoming shows, subjects related to these shows, and the random piece every now and again about, well, random stuff. It's the first job I've ever had where my writing skills are the goods on offer. (Writing for "The DM" and "Oxford Town" were freelance gigs, not jobs.) Don't get me wrong, it's a good deal, and I'm a whore for publication, but I never thought I'd have so much trouble with it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't consider my writing Nobel-worthy, though there's always hope for the future. (All joking aside, I don't want the Nobel--it's Euro-centric to the point of overt bias.) When it comes to my writing, I'm my own worst enemy. It's blood, toil, tears, and sweat on each blog entry, with varied results, of course. (I'd like to blog more often, but sometimes the inspiration just isn't there.) I want to put out good material. Usually, though, I'm writing about something I chose to write about, class assignments aside. When doing book reviews for "The DM," I chose the books. With "Oxford Town," I had the choice of turning down any piece I didn't want to work on. I never did, but, still, I could have. I obviously can blog about what I want, and my creative writing follows my ideas and mine alone.

You know, I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say with this blog. Oh, dear--wasted blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Anyway, it's been an interesting experience. I used to think writing came into two categories: assignments for school, and everything else. Now, there's a third: topics assigned to you by your boss that aren't as soul-draining as class assignments, but which can still kick your ass because, if given the choice, you'd never write about them in the first place. (In other words: writing for school, writing for work, and writing for fun.) Who would have thought that writing about the history of matchmaking in traditional Jewish communities could feel like writing out a request for a grant? Seriously! When it's work, it's no fun.

Now, that last statement probably doesn't come as any surprise to anyone, whether they consider themselves writers or not.

I never wanted this blog to be a place for me to just gripe and moan, so I'll end it on a high note. Rather, two high notes. One, I've received word that the British Fulbright Scholars Association is printing an article I submitted in their next newsletter. Second, a week ago, I suddenly had a story idea. Since I was already on my computer (I'm addicted to Supremacy1914.), I pulled up a blank page on Wordpad and started typing. Once I started, I couldn't stop until I was done, three hours later, at 1:30 in the morning. It was a burst of creativity and dedication I hadn't had in a while, and I was not only thankful for it, I was really happy with the finished project, which is saying something considering I am, as I've mentioned, the toughest critic of my writing. I had wanted to submit something to Yalobusha Review, a graduate student literary journal put out by the university each year, so I popped the story in an envelope and dropped it off.

Cross your fingers for me!

Politics and Other Nauseating Topics

2010-11-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

I confess to being more than a little tired of people telling me that my burn-out with American politics, or my desire to remove myself from it, is in some way a detriment. I see it as merely proof that the most intelligent, dedicated, and hopeful of us have our breaking point, the point at which we can no longer bring ourselves to be a part of a system we no longer believe in. Here is my response to an, admittedly polite and insightful, opinion that I simply cannot agree with. I consider opting out to be a perfectly acceptable decision.

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

If you're in a room with an awful smell, you have two options: you can try to get rid of the smell by opening a window or spraying potpourri, or you can leave the room. Both options are equally viable. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the room is on fire, anyway. I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor do I consider myself paranoid, but I am a historian, and I see parallels here that I do not like.

As to how our government works, I have two comments: One, I live in a country that makes more promises of greater value than any other in the world, then fails at keeping so many of them, and still touts itself as the best country in the world. Two, I appreciate that I am an optimist and a man of principle--not the sort of man built for politics.

We are a country consumed by the idea that we are as close to perfect as a country could get, yet we suffer from systematic racism, sexism, and homophobia. Our education system is failing us, while those who are educated are decried as "elitists." We pollute on a massive scale. We are awash in the shame of yet another useless, bloody war. We do not guarantee our citizens health care, as our bridges and roads crumble beneath us. We consume ourselves with debates over the legalization of marijuana and prostitution while huge corporations bankrupt the elderly. How anyone can say that this is the greatest country in the world with a straight face boggles my mind.

The bumper sticker has never been more correct: "If you aren't completely disgusted, you haven't been paying attention." Perhaps I would not be so burned-out and jaded if I lived in a country that did not try to delude itself into thinking it's something it isn't.

I would like to add that, while I acknowledge that the United Kingdom is not a perfect country, either, it no longer pretends to be. The benefits of fully accessible health care, the attention the populace pays to the rest of the world, the emphasis on education and knowledge, the respect and support of the arts, the ability to be civilly partnered throughout the country, and the ability of the people to hold their government much more accountable than we do our own makes it the place I chose to live my life and to raise my children. Do not take my comments about immigrating as exaggeration; nor are they merely manifestations of my missing friends and classmates. I intend to live there. I am fed up with this country, and knowing that there are millions of people who will answer not with, "Perhaps you are right," "What can we do to make it better?," or even a respectful, "I disagree, and let me explain why.," but with, "If you don't like it, leave." "Your tired and your poor" once looked to this country with hope and optimism for a better life for themselves and their lineage. That is how my family came to this country, and thus, how I came to be. I will not blame myself for doing the same thing, even though it is in reverse.

"Then, When, Now"

2010-10-31T14:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem last Christmas. (Yes, I'm extremely festive, as you can tell from the poem.) I've written poetry off and on for years now, but never done anything with it. In fact, a lot of poems have been lost along the wayside. So I thought I'd put one out there, and see if it got any responses, and what those responses might be. So.... Here goes.

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

“Then, When, Now”

Back then, when it happened, it happened with much noise.
Now, floating on the rushing, pulsing, throbbing air,
the cawing of crows and ravens must, for noise, suffice.

Then, when it happened, it happened with much light and heat.
Now, it is not so changed, for waves of sun with furnace heat
crash and smash across the shores.

Then, when it happened, it crushed all those high hopes and all those sweet dreams.
Now, there are only those low hopes and those bitter dreams
of finding old cans of soda and decent shade.

But that was then, when it happened, then, when everything was changed.
Now is now, and now is simple, simple and succinct,
with no thought to those then, whens or those can’t be, won’t be tomorrows.

The mushrooms that sprouted then, now vanished with the wind, now all gone away.
Their only proof of being then, when, are craters and the sight,
burned into skin, etched into bone, echoed in the ear, emblazoned in the eye.

What then was full and wet, now is empty and dry.
What cities now still standing, standing empty now,
and gas tanks then, when fumy wet, now only bony dry.

Used to be then, before, so very verdigris and green.
Now parched, starched, harsh, no life,
just umber, burnt; the corn rotten on the stalks.

I was walking then, when it happened.
Still walking now, now, after the then,
on broken, cracking, burning heated concrete.

In the then, when, Armageddon burned the eyes and then it pained the heart.
But that was then, and now is now, with the cracked concrete beneath my feet burning,
I then, when walking, am walking now, chasing heat lines on the highway.

In the then, when I walked, I knew where I was walking to.
But that was then, and now is now,
and there can’t be, won’t be any place to go.

In the then, when, there were climaxes always, punctuation marks to place an ending.
But that was then, and this is now, and in the now no such thing,
for the mark was made in the then, and there are no new beginnings in the end.

Dear Mr. President

2010-10-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to inform you that you have irrevocably and irreversibly lost my vote in 2012.

I knew in 2008 that you did not support gay marriage. I was awash with conflicting emotions: disappointment that you were not fully committed to representing the interests and rights of all Americans; resentment towards the fact that you were still the better of a mere two options; hope that your humanity would overpower your politics; and an appreciative recognition of the fact that you clearly and categorically promised to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

If I live to be 100, I will have voted for a presidential candidate a mere twenty times. Casting a vote for you was a major sign of the hope and faith I placed in you.

Sadly, I realize now that my hope and faith were misplaced. If I may speak freely, I consider your need to engender support and beneficence from a political party dedicated to not simply disagreeing with you but to destroying you to be pathetic and sad. You have disrespected yourself and all those who placed so much faith in you. Yet, you seem dedicated to an unfathomable and completely unsupported belief that you can continue to work with a Congress fettered by unfeeling, intolerant Republicans.

You insist that you need Congressional approval to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Now, in spite of your position as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, and the capital you have gained from three separate court rulings decrying "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as unconstitutional, you have decided to do worse than nothing. Your administration has stated its intent to appeal the court's injunction against the implementation of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Even as the military says it will not enforce this policy while the injunction is in place, your White House has announced it will fight the injunction. Ignoring for the moment that you could issue an Executive Order forbidding the implementation of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" even as it remains on the books, you could simply ignore the injunction and allow the courts to strike down DADT just as it struck down anti-sodomy laws in 2003.

You could sit back, do nothing, and be the hero of the day.

Yet, you will not. Even as gay youths across this country take their lives because they cannot see a place for themselves in this world, you hesitate to make a step that says, "Gay men and women are human beings, with unalienable rights and a place in this world."

I do not understand you, Mr. President. You have promised this for more than two years, yet now you seem dedicated to working to prevent that very promise from coming true. Perhaps if you knew just how much it hurt to vote for a candidate who did not consider me worthy of marriage because I could not deny that he was still the better of such limited options, you might come to understand my feelings. It was such a devil's bargain to vote for someone who did not think I should be able to marry in my country, but who thought I should at least have the right to die for it. Now, you will not even give me that.

Until now, I have struggled to not place upon your shoulders the animosity, terror, repugnance, and sadness that I feel when my rights, or lack thereof, are dictated to me and my community by people who have no clue what it is to be like us. Not even your job title gives you permission to give or take my rights.

In the long term, one vote matters little, particularly with our illogical electoral system. I do not expect you to mourn for it. Nor is there much chance that I will vote for the Republican candidate in 2012, so you can rest easy in the knowledge that I have not turned to the opposition. I hope that the knowledge that your actions have left me in grave doubt not just of your humanity, but of humanity in general, might give you pause, if even for merely the briefest of moments.

With hope, Kenneth

What Theater Has Meant, Means, and Will Mean

2010-10-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally written in a slightly different manner, but I have changed parts of it. It has gone from something narrative to more a cathartic piece. The title has also been changed.
-------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure where to start with this post. There's so much that needs to be said, so much back-story I have to let you in on, it's hard to know where to begin. I know what I want to say, just not how to say it.

Let me begin by reminding my readers that I received an undergraduate degree in theater. Initially, it was a great experience. I was still in the process of coming out and trying to find a place in the world where being gay didn't feel like a total detriment. Theater was great for that, as I'm sure you can imagine. It was also a place where my creativity and high energy could be put to good use. At first, things seemed really great.

I worked hard to earn a position of respect in the department. I wanted to be the person everyone could depend on, whose ability and talent shined, and who naturally, if egotistically, could always be called upon to be part of the process. It hurt that I was left without a part in show after show, but I truly loved the atmosphere of theater, and the sense that anything was possible. There was something electric about it.

But the light started to fade by about the end of my first year. An entire season had gone by, and I hadn't been cast in anything. I had dreamed of being a dancer my entire life, and had hoped that now that I was in college, my parents could no longer hinder that dream. I soon found that my dance classes were little more than calisthenics, and the teachers interested only in those who had come to college already able to dance. I had been given the spot of stage manager in one show, only to have it taken away from me by the technical director. He tried to make it up to me by giving me the SM spot in another play, but then the director of that show took it away from me. That summer, another director would offer me the spot of SM in his show, only to end up giving it to my friend that fall. And suddenly, the people I'd been friends with suddenly didn't seem that friendly, either, not because we were in competition with each other, but... just because. Egos tend to run large in the theater. The gold was proving to be plate, not solid.

Through the second year of the program, I began doing my own thing, without anyone's help. I wrote and directed my own short plays, I directed "The Vagina Monologues" for charity, acted in local theater, and even, in my crowning achievement, directed "Antigone," which ran for three days and received accolades from the head of the school's classics department. My theater classes began to feel like a hindrance, a distraction, rather than a help. All that time and effort I put into helping other peoples productions go smoothly, and I couldn't even get a professor to come and see my stuff. (One professor came to a staged reading I did for charity.) And the friendships that I thought would prove eternal began to fade and diminish. By the time my final theater class rolled around, I had already checked out, and scrambled at the end of the course to get a "C."

A less than stellar ending to a beginning that had seemed out of this world.

A few years went by. I was still in Oxford, and often on campus. I would cringe when I would see professors from the theater department, and there was only one classmate I had met in theater who I still continued to see socially. I had a lot of resentment in me. I had been treated poorly, and my love of theater had been stomped on. During my two trips to London, I gorged myself on West End theater, seeing 17 shows in a combined period of only 32 days. But while back in Oxford, I refused to see a single show that Ole Miss put on. It was just too much for me, and my all-consuming jealousy of people on stage was just that: all-consuming.

I rediscovered my love of theater while in Leicester. (Thank you LUT.) When I was with them, I felt good about myself. I was able to consider myself a strong actor. I was able to write and direct for them, and what I had to offer might not have been perfect, but LUT liked and appreciated it. And the friends I made in LUT are friends I won't let fade away.

After returning to Oxford from my ten months in Leicester, I resumed writing columns for "Oxford Town," the local arts and life paper. I returned with a greater belief in my dramatic abilities, and I wasn't going to let my proximity to Ole Miss Theater ruin that. I approached my editor about being the go-to guy for Ole Miss Theater productions. He agreed, and I approached the department about doing publicity for their shows. I had redefined my relationship to the department. I was now in the position of (some) authority. I was their publicity, and what Kenneth giveth, Kenneth could also taketh away. I was on a real high there for a while.

Whatever feelings of grandiosity I might have felt, it was still a powerful feeling of validation.

I met with Rene last week, and we talked about her upcoming show, "The Drowsy Chaperone." It was only the second show I'd done a write-up on, the first being with a faculty member who had joined the department after I had graduated. This was the first time I'd be sitting down in front of someone who had wronged me. (Rene was the director who took the SM spot from me after the technical director had given it to me. I stood in the stairwell of our building and cried when it happened.) Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a pleasant meeting. She even hugged me when it was over.

I received news from my editor that "Oxford Town" is losing some pages, threatening the very existence of my article. (Pretty grand language, eh?) I e-mailed Rene, apologizing for what might happen. (I don't like breaking promises, and I promised her publicity.) She didn't respond, but I saw her over the weekend when she came in to see a movie with her husband. We spoke, and she was very kind and understanding about the situation.

What I might not be doing a good enough job explaining is that my conversations with Rene have been more than just pleasant. She's been genuinely interested in how things are going in my life. (She heard about my winning the Fulbright before I left for England last year, and was very warm and congratulatory when she bumped into me.) And I guess what I've come to realize is that there comes a point when you have to let go of the past.

I won't go so far as to say the feelings I felt back then are illegitimate. They were real, and they were mine. But maybe there's room in life for our feelings to evolve and to mature, for the edges to become less jagged. Maybe there's room for a relationship to improve, rather than just diminish or fade. Maybe there comes a point where I have to realize that what Rene did, she did for her show. What she did to me was simply a byproduct. I have to realize I'm not the center of her universe, and while I can go into all sorts of theoreticals about how she could have handled it better, or invited me to be assistant stage manager of her show, or any of the probably almost infinite things she could have done to make my life a little easier back then, there might just come a point where it simply doesn't matter anymore.

I'm not ready to forgive and forget everything. There are faculty I'll never like, that I'll never want to like. Nothing will ever change what I went through. But holding grudges is tougher for the holder than the held against, and I have to reconcile that someone can take something from me and still think highly of me and maybe, just maybe, want good things for me.

And, there comes a point where you just have to get the f*** over s***.

Believing in Happily Ever After, Part II

2010-10-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

I had a moment of clarity the other day about the... intensity with which I want to meet my soul mate.

First, you need to understand some things about my family situation. My mom's side of the family is extremely limited: myself, my mom, my grandma, and my mom's brother and his wife. There's a lot of love here, but I've been aware for some time of the extremely finite nature of this side of my family. Someday, it will be myself, my partner, and my children, and that's it. (They are also all in Wisconsin, and have always lived no less than a thousand miles from me my entire life.)

Now, the situation with my dad's side of the family is different, almost mirror-like. It's large, but, simply put, I don't feel a lot of love from that side of the family. (And this is with me living just down the road from a lot of them.) My birthdays have always been forgotten (For the record, I now share my birthday with three little girls in my family, so there's absolutely no excuse to forget.), I've never gotten support on anything I was doing right or wrong, and it's often impossible to have a civilized, enjoyable conversation with any of them. I've always been the forgotten grandchild, nephew, and cousin.

There have been a lot of opinions floated, mostly by my mother, about why this is the case. Perhaps, as she argues, it's because I was born in and lived in Germany until I was six, so they didn't have the opportunity to bond with me as a small child. Another idea, also my mother's, is that because I was the only grandchild that didn't have either a health problem or come from a broken home, I didn't need as much attention and support. (I admit this one could have a morsel of truth in it.) For all the problems I've had with my mom, I give her full credit that she's been aware of this for some time, and she doesn't like it, though she's too scared of a family feud to say anything. One of my aunts once called me the black sheep of the family once. This label was based on how different my politics, social beliefs, and interests are from the rest of the family. If this is true, then the logical deduction is that I'm ignored because I'm different. I don't like that reason at all.

Well, whatever the reason, the fact remains that I'm odd-man out. My family are so disconnected from me and my life that I can write all of this without worrying that any one of them will read it.

Now, I don't say all this to engender sympathy. In fact, I'm asking you, my reader, here and now, not to send any such messages to me. That's not what this blog is about.

So why am I writing all this? Well, as I mentioned above, I had a moment of clarity yesterday that hinges on all this. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs includes having company, of having a sense of belonging to a social network or community. There are some people who prefer being alone, but I'm going to go out on the proverbial limb and suggest that they are the minority. I'm certainly not a part of that minority. I've always enjoyed being around people as much I can be. Sometimes I can be obsessive about it, and sometimes I even feel like I can't function without being in a group of people. (Statistics homework is a good example. I really and truly cannot believe I can do it without being with my classmates.) Is this a good thing? I'll go out on another limb and say no.

So.... What do we know about me? I'm incredibly social. I'm incredibly focused on finding my soul mate. Neither of these are bad things, except when I get obsessive. Hmmm.... Though I've never stopped to think critically about why I like being in groups, I have considered the whole soul mate aspect of it, and wondered why it's such a strong desire. Yesterday's moment of clarity may have given me my answer.

Maybe it all has to do with (Maslow) needing some love and affection.

Believing in Happily Ever After

2010-09-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

I was party to a conversation yesterday at work that really upset me. Unfortunately, most of the conversations that go on at the cinema have to do with sex. Now, I don't mind an occasional conversation about sex. I think there's very little that can't be discussed from time to time, but this is constant, and often gratuitous. It seems little is off-limits in these conversations, up to and including discussions about technique and tricks. It's been known to get foul, trust me.

Yesterday, I attempted to direct the conversation from sex tricks to a discussion of intimacy. Let me reiterate: I have no problem with sexual conversations, as long as they are interspersed with conversations about literature, art, politics, religion, etc. (We're unofficially forbidden from discussing the latter two topics. Ugh.) Here's where I get personal: I interjected that I was committed to maintaining celibacy until I found myself in a committed relationship.

I couldn't have received a worse response if I had said it in the middle of a high school cafeteria.

One of my managers, J, who is gay and committed to having as many conversations about sex as he can during his lifetime, took issue with my feelings. Suffice it so say, rather than being a "Mr. Right" guy, he's a "Mr. Right Now" guy. He said as much! The term "Mr. Right Now" actually came out of his mouth! (It's the first time in my life I've heard someone use the term with any degree of sincerity, rather than as a joke.) He actually confided, if you can describe telling a group of people with a normal conversational volume level as confiding, in us that his partner, who he has been with for five years now, was not Mr. Right. In fact, J considered him second in place to the guy J really wanted. (And to convey to you just how horribly uncomfortable this conversation was to be a part of, J's partner is his, mine, and my coworkers' boss! We know this guy, and see him on a fairly regular basis!) My idea of a Mr. Right, of the fairy tale, was mocked and questioned. Apparently, it's an impossibility.

I refuse to believe this. I choose to believe in the fairy tale. I know that no relationship is perfect, and that there will always be things about my partner that I will want, but be unable, to change. I don't see that as being an insurmountable obstacle to "happily ever after." I'm saddened by the jaded attitude of my coworkers. They were talking about dating younger, so that you could train the other person! J's insinuation was that he would leave his partner if something better came along! Not all relationships last forever, but by God, don't we owe it to ourselves and our relationships to act like they will? To at least try to believe it?

I guess all I can do is remind myself to never take relationship advice from someone whose sole contribution to the conversation would remain limited to sexual positions and stories about settling for #2. I admit to possibly being more sensitive than I should be. Finding, and keeping, a life partner is an important thing to me. I think about it a lot, probably too much, and I fear that I will never find a soul mate. I don't know why I worry about it so much. Maybe it's because I'm feeling old these days. (People assure me I'm still quite young.) Maybe it's because I feel I need someone to make me feel complete. (I honesty don't think it's that, and I disagree with the idea that wanting someone in your life means there's something wrong with your self-esteem.) Whatever the reason, the fact remains that I cannot imagine what my life would look like if there wasn't someone sharing it with me. If you consider that a bad thing, fine. That's certainly your right, and we'll agree to disagree.

But until proven otherwise, I'm going to believe in the fairy tale. (And walk away the next time someone brings up sexual positions.)

Why University is Failing Us

2010-09-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

I just spent more than two hours sitting as this computer doing online quizzes for a CITI online training program. I had to apply for a "Waiver of IRB Application for Class Projects" for my social research methods course. I feel like death, and I can't help but think what else I could have gotten done in those two hours. Maybe, just maybe, something I would have enjoyed?

Ok, I'm bitching a lot lately. You'd think with my dissertation being done, I'd be on Cloud Nine. Well.... Ok, look, I admit that filling out this waiver is an important step in my research. It is important that the people sociologists study or work with are treated properly and that their privacy and the like be respected. The fact that the only research I see myself using this semester does not involve interviews or any other live interaction with people is really beside the point. If, at any time in the next twenty months, I so much as hand out a survey to a group of students for my research, then filling out this waiver will have been beneficial for everyone.

It's just this waiver is a symptom of a bigger disease. Actually, it may not even be a symptom so much as an unwelcome reminder--an unwelcome reminder of why I was so adamant not to return to academia. (Alas....) There's a fine line between (a) accepting that, as an adult, you sometimes have to do things you don't want to do and (b) deciding that life is short and you will not fill your limited time up with things that make you unhappy. Now, that's the macrocosm. The microcosm would be to apply that in a classroom setting. Sometimes there are assignments you don't want to do, but you have to do them. It's not just about having to do it because the professor says so, it's because it's something unpleasant that you do as an adult to garner something you want/need.

Here's where the problem sets in. It's not just a question of a particularly unpleasant task in a class that is pretty cool otherwise. (For my final project in my research methods class, I will be writing a paper on the representation of women in the original Star Trek series. Getting to watch Star Trek and calling it work is worth a couple hours spent doing this crap online.) The problem is with the current academic structure.

Someone, be it a chancellor or a dean, sits down and sets out a curriculum that all, for instance, BA in Liberal Arts students, must pursue. This curriculum includes, as it does at Ole Miss, two math classes. Now, this curriculum has been set out to provide some sort of balanced education for all students, regardless of their interests or majors. A history major and a German major will both take two math classes, whether or not they want to. Or, put it another way, whether or not they can.

I made a 27 on my ACT. The highest score possible on the ACT is a 36. My reading score was 32, and my grammar 34. Almost perfect scores. My math score was 19, hence the 27. (Science was 23; not perfect, but not a 19, either.) So, what does this tell you about me? I'm really good at reading and comprehension, and that, in all probability, I'm a pretty good speaker and reasonably well read. (I like to think these things are true.) You can also tell that I am not very good with math.

Sadly, that didn't matter to Ole Miss. I stayed busy my entire time there, earning majors in history and theater, with minors in English and gender studies, and taking my full requirement of language courses, and a fair number of electives. But it didn't matter. There was a system in place to make sure I got a "balanced" education, and by God, I was going to adhere to that system.

My very first semester, I ended up with a 2.36 GPA because of my math class. The next three semesters were spent feverishly working to get my GPA up. (And I'll tell you now, I am no better at math now than I was then.) I received a "C" in my second math class. Not perfect, but better than before!

I had a moment of intense clarity last year, while sitting in one of my MA classes at Leicester. My classmates and I were sitting in Statistics for Historians, a class none of us had actually chosen to take. I can't attest for my classmates, but I was bored out of my mind, and not a little annoyed that I was spending valuable time on something I had no interest in. And just as my undergraduate math class had hurt my GPA, my stats grade was the only one I received at Leicester that wasn't ranked "Meritorious" or "Distinction." It was at this time that I realized, I couldn't keep going this way. I couldn't make my life in a system that was supposed to be there for us, for our learning and betterment, that was in fact so rigid and unyielding. So-and-so said, "Take this course," and my interests, goals, and expectations were subsumed inside a broad, anonymous system that never once tried to take into consideration my, or my classmates', needs.

Well, here I am again. (Man, I wish I could have found a job!) Now, research methods isn't the class I'm having problems with right now. I don't know for certain whether I would have chosen to take it or not, if given the choice, but I can absolutely see how the course will be beneficial to me. The class I'm having problems with is Statistics for Sociologists. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the professor, but when he said, on the very first day, that most of us would never use this stuff again after this class, I experienced the equivalent of mental vomiting. Once again, I found myself sitting in a class I didn't need or want, but which some nebulous body had decided I must take. (Sorry, but, however good this "body's" intentions might have been, they cannot deem any class as necessary if they don't at least find out my goals within the field.)

Required math classes for those who want to be actors. Required astronomy classes for those who want to become fluent in Portuguese. And, indeed, English literature courses for those who want to become mathematicians or theoretical physicists. University is supposed to be there for us. It is supposed to reflect our needs and desires. We're paying a lot of money for this education. A university, for all the good it does us and all that it represents, is still a service industry. We go to a particular one because we choose it, and we give it our money for the goods we want. What's all this extra stuff that is forced on us, other than distractions, hindrances to our GPAs, and drains on our pockets? (Just think: if a history major wasn't required to take two math classes, how much money would a university lose each semester in tuition fees? What's more, it's becoming more and more likely that students spend not four years in university, but five. Is this because universities are requiring more in hopes of better educating their students, or is it because a fifth year brings that university even more money?)

I'm moving into the realm of conspiracy theories, now, so I'll stop that particular line of thought. Yet, there's no getting around this problem. As far as I'm concerned, something has gone wrong with this process, or has been wrong since its inception. A balanced education in elementary school and high school is a great thing: it exposes students to all there is to learn out there, and gives them an idea of what they want to pursue when they go to college. And there is certainly nothing wrong with a curriculum that tries to create well-rounded students who aren't merely conversant with their one area of expertise, but enable choices (Such as, I'm required to take either a science or math course.) or cut down on the number of required courses (Such as, I'm only required to take one math class instead of two.). I'll even go so far as to say that hourly requirements can still be enforced, rather than lowered. Make a history major take an extra history course to make up for the math course he/she no longer needs to take.

In conclusion (I'm a pretentious snot.), I come back to the idea that the university fails us when it does not allow greater self-control. I leave you with this story from the superlative movie Accepted, where a young student laments she couldn't take the photography course she wanted because it didn't count towards a photography degree. She then parts company with her friend, because she, a photography major, is late for her required Ancient Roman history class.

I fail to see the logic.

A General Malaise

2010-09-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm done with my dissertation, I actually have time to breathe, which is good, because the flow of oxygen to my brain has enabled high-level brain activity. I kind of missed that.

So, now that one chapter of my life has come to its conclusion, what's next? On the face of it, things seem clear: earn this second MA degree while saving up as much money as you can to make sure that when it's time to start the next chapter, you're ready. Continue pursuing career advice at the uni's career development center. Build your writing portfolio. Start researching job opportunities in late 2011. Do not wait until the week before graduation in 2012.

Ummm.... Ok, it all sounds good, but it's still not working for me on some level.

The problem is the geographic location. Let me say first off, I think Ole Miss is a great school, the sociology department is superlative, and I have made new friends who I value and appreciated. But this is all starting to feel a little samey.

I've been living this life for too long.

On the face of it, I feel no shame for being back at home. Even with Fulbright's money, life was expensive in Leicester. I could have been more frugal, but, hey, life is often about learning lessons the hard way. My accounts bottomed out, leaving me with no money with which to continue living in England whilst looking for work or what not. (The true mistake came in not beginning a job search the moment I arrived in Leicester. With my contacts, the odds of my finding something decent were pretty high.) I was offered a chance to teach English in China, and I wanted it, but it, too, required start-up money and a plane ticket, neither of which was in the cards. Or, in this case, the wallet.

So this was a good opportunity for me. After all, I could have just been left living at home working at the cinema, saving up money, but stagnating in such a limited environment. Without school in the way, maybe England would be closer at hand, but I can't say for certain. At least by attending school, I earn an assistantship within my department and I'm starting a paid internship that will utilize my writing skills. These things have allowed me to cut back my hours at the cinema, enabling me to feel a little more like an adult. (Now if I can just afford to get out of the house I grew up in, things would be even better. I hate living with my parents. Absolutely. Hate. It.)

You know, I don't even think it's about England, per se. I loved Leicester, London, and Jersey, but if given the right opportunity, I would move to New York City, Beijing, or Copenhagen. (But not Paris. Never Paris.) It's this place. No matter how much I like my program, no matter how good a school Ole Miss is, this is a place that has given me everything that it possibly can. There is nothing more for me to learn here. (I don't mean that in an academic sense, but in a personal way.)

I feel like I'm talking about "the problem with no name" that a lot of stay-at-home moms sometimes feel. I just feel a certain malaise that I can't control or properly identify. It's like shining your flashlight on an animal in the dark. You catch a glimpse, but then it's gone. But I know the cure: it's changing my life. It's reshaping my life to better reflect what I need it to be. Not just what I need it to be, but what I want it to be. I have to get back out there. To Leicester, or London, or St. Helier, or Beijing, or Sydney, or Mumbai, or Port Elizabeth, or Fortaleza, or Timbuktu. (Well, Timbuktu is in the desert, so maybe not Timbuktu.)

So how do I survive the next 19-20 months?

Thanks Where Thanks Are Due

2010-09-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

It has been far too long since my last post, and to those who follow me on here, I'm sorry. I finished my dissertation today, so my time is (mostly) mine again, and I am so very thankful for it. Part of my dissertation had to include an Acknowledgments page, and in it I thanked three people/institutions, while really only feeling thankful towards one. (Bitter much?) So, I'd like this to be an opportunity to express my thanks to those who really made this possible. It won't be my best-written blog, but it comes from the heart.

In no particular order:

Kate Crispin of Leicester's historical studies department for doing more to help me adapt to an English university than anyone else. (She is the one person I thanked to whom I meant it.)

My best friend Gavin, who was a source of strength for me during my worst moments.

For 75 Regent Road, and some of the greatest people it will ever be my privilege to meet.

My friends from LUT for making so much of my time in Leicester the best time of my life. Dom, Matt D., Sara, and Emily, you are the stars by which I set my course.

For Julie-Ann, my chaplain while at Leicester. Being with her made me feel closer to God.

To all my friends at International Tea, for making me feel so special.

Drs. Young, Carruth, Grayzel, and Skemp for their support in helping me win the Fulbright.

My classmates in the historical studies department, who never failed to let me know I wasn't the only one pulling his hair out.

For David and Mindy Goulstine for being my Fulbright Mentor, for welcoming me into their home, and for so obviously caring about me.

For my subwarden, Nassau, who saved my life.

For Kevin, for helping with spacing, page numbers, and margins. Sounds trivial, but I haven't a clue how to do any of it.

For Carl, my trans-Atlantic friend, for opening his home to me, showing me his island, and for Grosnez.

For Dudley, who supported my efforts in winning a Fulbright, and invited me to become a part of the history I was studying. I am forever indebted to him for that.

For Nellie, for sitting down and talking about those horrible moments in her life so that I might truly understand.

And, finally, but with real and true appreciate and not-a-little devotion, to the people of the Channel Islands, for surviving what they survived, and for honoring their history in such a proud and thorough way. Your home is beautiful, and my aspiration in life is to return.

Five minutes from now, I will likely remember someone I forgot, so I reserve the right to add on as many names as necessary into the "comments" section. I am so thankful to everyone I listed here. I miss you all (except for those here in Oxford, as I see them often)!

Salaam Alaikum

2010-08-24T08:33:00.001-07:00

What follows is a letter to the editor that I have written in response to the Islamaphobia running rampant in American political culture. I cannot say with certainty that it will be published, but I hope it will at least be read here.

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

Dear Editor,

I would like to express my feelings of outrage at the “controversy” over the so-called Ground Zero mosque. It takes neither a genius nor a prophet to see that the resistance to building this Islamic community center has nothing to do with sensibilities or concepts of “good taste.” It is Islamaphobia at its worse.

It is a sad testament to the worst that humanity has to offer when any group of people is hated or feared simply because of who they inherently and unequivocally are. To hate a suicide bomber is to be human, but to hate a person because they, like those suicide bombers, are Muslim is racism. No amount of denial from the conservative right can hide that fact. Of course they will not admit to being anti-Muslim. We live in a society where, however rampant racism actually is, it is no longer politically correct to admit to that racism.

For those unversed in world history, let me remind you that during the Dark Ages, when education and the arts floundered and died in the Christian world, the Islamic peoples of the world celebrated a golden age of development in areas as diverse as agriculture, economics, and technology. Their influence has lasted for centuries, influencing in some way or another many of today’s societies.

Let me also remind you that history is replete with the efforts of one group to revile, exclude, persecute, and ultimately destroy other groups. Those on the right who like to demagogically call our President a Nazi should review Holocaust history. The Nazis reviled Jewish art, excluded Jews from many facets of daily life, persecuted them with yellow stars, and ultimately sought to destroy them. So for those in America who wish to make it a crime for Muslims to be Muslims, let me tell you here and now, history is not on your side, and your descendants will be as ashamed of your actions as I am of my own segregationist ancestors.

To Muslim Americans, and to Muslims worldwide, let me wish you a blessed Ramadan. To the millions of Muslims affected by the flooding in Pakistan, may Allah bestow his blessings on you.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Jones
Sociology Graduate Student, 2012
US-UK Fulbright Scholar, 2009-2010

A Censorship Dilemma

2010-08-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

I'm on the horns of a dilemma here, and really not sure what to do about it.

A few years back, when I was a book reviewer for my school's newspaper, (Shout out to The Daily Mississippian.) one of the paper's opinion columnists wrote an article that advocated banning certain books. Needless to say, I was outraged. I felt personally offended. I don't believe in censorship. I am a very strong supporter of the First Amendment, even when I hate what I'm hearing. So, my indignation, added to my position as book reviewer, made me a good choice, I think, for the rebuttal argument. If I may say so, I think it's was one of my best articles. I not only argued the fundamental right of press, but I took it a step further. I asked, 'What do you do with the book once it's off the shelf? Do we have Nazi-style book burnings?' I also asked, 'What is to be done with the author? Should we put out fatwahs on them like Iran did to Salman Rushdie?'

So here's my problem: I am in possession of a book so offensive I want to be rid of it. But I don't want to risk anyone else reading it. (I just want to say I take this very seriously. I feel like I'm talking about my deepest shame.)

The book in question is a collection of three plays by Julia Pascal. The first play is entitled Theresa. It is about a young Jewish woman named Theresa Steiner who was deported from Guernsey in 1942 and murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz. Her death was a tragedy of the highest magnitude. But the play is so offensive and misleading, I hate it with a passion.

Anyone who reads my blogs regularly knows that I love the Channel Islands. I've become quite protective of them. So I'm left in an uncomfortable position sometimes when I have to come to terms with the fact that the Islands did not come out the German Occupation completely unsullied. I wouldn't say the powers that be had blood on their hands, but there was certainly dirt under their nails. One of the tragedies of the Occupation was the position the Island authorities found themselves in when it came to Jewish citizens. It was an example of tactical collaboration, based on the concept of giving a little (3 Jewish lives) to gain a lot (thousands of non-Jewish Islanders). It's not a fair or easy trade, but I dare you to do better.

But Theresa is foul! The play rewrites history. Pascal puts Steiner in her mid-fifties, when she was, in reality, 26 in 1942. She gives her a grown son, when nothing suggests she ever had a child. (I believe these two alterations are meant to make Steiner an even more sympathetic character, and far exceed 'artistic license.') She vilifies, and the history suggests unjustly, the British inspector that Jewish residents had to register with. What's more, and most damning, is that the way the play is written seems to suggest that the Island authorities were an important part of the Holocaust, integral players only too happy to send Jews off to the gas chambers, as opposed to a hapless group of people whose ancient form of government left them in an almost untenable position. I'm not insulting the island government. Again, I dare you to do better.

Pascal touts her independent and secret research on Guernsey, the island from which Steiner was deported, and the island on which Pascal's play is banned. At first, I was offended at the idea of an entire island banning a play. Now, I'm not so sure.

I'm just not sure what to do now. I won't have the book on my shelf. I won't donate it to the library or sell it to my local used bookstore, because most Americans don't know anything about the Occupation, and I'm not going to disseminate inaccurate information about it. I can't burn it, and throwing it away might not have the same violent and racist history as a book burning, but it has the same effect.

As I write this, I am beginning to think I might be worrying too much about this, and that's certainly a viable opinion for anyone reading this. It's just I've always prided myself on my broad First Amendment opinions. It's kind of rough to find there is actually a limit to them. It behooves me now to ensure I never become a hypocrite about any similar situation.

Meanwhile, I hope it isn't true about all publicity being good publicity. Do not read this play! If it is the only thing you know about the Occupation, then you don't know jack!

See This Movie!

2010-08-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

The last time I reviewed a movie for this blog, I had nothing good to say about it. I was really hard on it, in fact, but I make no apologies. Today, though, I watched a new movie that I have nothing but good things to say about. The movie is 'The Other Guys,' and it's worth whatever your local movie theatre charges for the ticket.

'The Other Guys' stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, not my two favorite actors. I normally can't stand Will Ferrell, who could take a joke I laughed at five minutes ago and ruin it, and Mark Wahlberg, who strikes me as something of a redneck. (And there's reason to believe he's homophobic, as well.) I know what you're thinking: is this how I treat a movie I like? Ok, I admit it, I'm not overly fond of the movie's two leading men. So just imagine how great the movie must be for me to get over that!

The truly amazing thing about 'The Other Guys' is that it manages to be three things at once--comedy, action movie, and social thermometer-- and do a good job at all of them. First, the movie is just plain funny. The running gags about Will Ferrell's animal magnetism (I don't see it, and I don't want to.) are hilarious, and his relationship with his wife is killer funny. The scene where her mother acts as middle 'man' for their sex talk will have you rolling on the floor. (And you will think about adding, 'Gator's bitches better wear their jimmies!' to your Facebook quotes.) The action scenes are pretty sweet, as well. You'll love Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock's cameos as some seriously gung-ho detectives, and there's an epic jewel heist involving a wrecking ball. I mean, it's all over the place with awesomeness.

But the reason I'm blogging about this movie isn't just for its entertainment value, though it does have that in spades. I'm blogging about this movie because you need to see this movie. It is powerful in its social awareness. The main thread of the movie is an investigation into the crooked financial dealings of a business tycoon who has stolen $32,000,000,000 from various clients. The tycoon intends to steal another $32,000,000,000 (The number of zeroes here makes me physically ill.) from various sources to make it back. It's a perfect analogy for the chaos and outright looting that has occured on Wall Street in the past few years. It's a crime flick with not a little intelligence, and its timing couldn't be better. At this point, I'm more scared of those assholes (There, I said it.) on Wall Street than I am of al-Qaeda.

Even the credits are epic. As the credits roll, various financial facts are presented to the audience. These are things people need to know. It's just the sort of thing that's going to make the average citizen mad as hell, and then, maybe, the powers that be will have to do something about it. (I have my doubts.) As someone who works at a cinema, I have seen the audience stay behind to read all the facts, including my personal 'favorite:'

maximum pension for a NYC police officer-- $48,026
maximum pension for a CEO--$83,000,000

I'm willing to bet that a large portion of these audiences aren't fully aware of just how flawed and corrupt the financial system is. This isn't meant to suggest they're dumb. This economic stuff is hard and not fun, and the whole financial system can seem like some weird Kraken that is beyond comprehension. I get it. That's why I hope these easy to understand factoids draw some attention to things that need to known, and maybe change the minds of some people. It's vital.

So, go to this movie. Laugh your butt off, cheer when the good guys win, and leave the theatre with the righteous indignation that the credits are sure to induce.

A Big Day for Gays. I guess....

2010-08-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Four days ago, Judge Vaughn Walker struck down a California law banning same-sex marriage in the state. It was an exciting and validating day for homosexuals (and bisexuals) across the country, not just for those living in California. The decision is held up for the moment as the anti-gay defense plans its appeal. This appeal could go all the way to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States. It is possible that the Court could eventually strike down all laws that ban gay marriage in the United States, much as Lawrence v. Texas struck down anti-sodomy laws not just in Texas, but in all states that still had such laws on the books.

So why am I not merely unimpressed, but even insulted?

I'm not saying I wasn't happy to hear about Proposition 8 being struck down. I remember learning the proposition had passed the day after President Obama was elected. (The proposition was on the same ballot as the presidential election.) I felt like someone had walked into my party and poisoned the punch. I don't like any laws that infringe on the rights and abilities of members of the LGBT community. But I find the cure tastes as foul as the poison.

I have long been sick of being a topic of debate, wherever that debate might take place, be it in Congress or at peoples dinner tables. I loathe being used as an evil specter which corrupt, ignorant, and often adulterous politicians use to frighten their bases into coming out and voting against their own economic interests. I'm sick of hearing people talk about this, even when they support full marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

My professors have a lot of control over my academic career and how it turns out. That's logical, and I accept the fact that I am not in control. My boss has total control over whether or not I am gainfully employed. I may not like it, but I accept the fact that I am not in control. My editor can tell me to change an article because he disagrees with something I've written. I certainly don't like my work being censored or altered, but I accept that it's the price I pay as I work towards becoming an editor myself. All this is fine. It's the structure by which we all live, and I accept it and live within these precepts.

Politicians and millions of Mississippians who should have no say in the argument have exerted total control over my right to marry. They have no right to do this. As long as I am not hurting anyone, they are not entitled to any measure of control or opinion when it comes to my private life. Their intrusion is disgusting and offensive, and I want it to stop.

You see, to me, this is so much more fundamental than a battle between politicians on the right and those on the left, or about a battle at the polls between those who support full civil rights for gays and lesbians and those who don't. There should be no battle! They should have no more say about my rights and privileges than I do about those of straight people, or black people, Chinese people, handicapped people, blonds, Sikhs, or people with multiple sclerosis. They don't have the right! Just as no person has a right to enslave another person, or force them to have sex against their will, or force them to convert to another religion, people who are not a member of the LGBT community have no right to exert control over us! It's not just robbing us of marriage that degrades us, it's having the debate in the first place!

The thing I love most about this decision is that Judge Vaughn Walker is an openly gay man. I am joyous that this decision was made by a gay man. (I would have been happy with a lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered judge, and, of course, a straight judge would have left me happy, as well. ) To the extent that anyone should exert control over another person, this is how it should be! A conservative pundit has argued that Judge Walker should have recused himself from the case because he was gay. If you followed that thread of illogical, you end up believing that straight people should not preside over any case that has to deal with heterosexuals. (I see a judiciary filled with LGBT judges.)

Others, of course, have argued that his findings were biased by his sexuality. They may be. It certainly wouldn't surprise me. I wouldn't care, either, as it's merely a tit-for-tat response to an anti-gay bias that left millions of American citizens voting against the rights of the LGBT community. It's so incredibly insulting and sickening to be presented with the idea that an anti-gay bias among heterosexuals is somehow more legitimate than a pro-gay bias among homosexuals! Am I the only one who sees the absurdity?

Well, until the Presidency, the Congress, and the Judicial branch are filled with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals, (I can hope, right?) we as a community do not have an overwhelming ability to exert a legal control over ourselves. To an extent, that's ok. If we were to have total control over all aspects of our lives, who's to say we wouldn't create a caste system with ourselves on top? To a democratically-minded person with respect for the rights of all individuals, such a caste system would be anathema, and rightly so. But just as a gay-dominate social and legal system must not come to pass, so, too, must the straight-dominate social and legal system come down.

If I have offended anyone, I apologize. This is not meant to be an anti-heterosexual tract. It's merely an assertion of my right as a human being to self-control. I have the right to decide who I want to marry, and to go through with that choice. (Excepting, of course, situations where force or coersion occur.) Nobody should have control over that decision but me. It insults and stifles me to think of men and women I have never met having that control. It simply isn't right.

A Movie for Schmucks

2010-08-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Warning: This blog is made of spoilers.

I just saw a movie so incredibly cliche, tired, and all-around awful that I have to write about to warn my friends and readers to stay away. The movie is 'Dinner for Schmucks.' Heed my words: do not spend your money on this movie. I was able to go for free since I work at a cinema, and I still feel cheated.

The basic rundown is this: in order to get the promotion he needs in order to impress his girlfriend, Steven (Paul Rudd) must use Barry (Steve Carrell) to get ahead, even if it's at Barry's expense. (Steve seems blind to the fact that his girlfriend loves him just as he is. Ho-hum, wake up Steve. This entire movie is filled with tired, frustrating-to-watch miscommunications.) Steve hopes to impress his boss and get the promotion by bringing Barry to a 'dinner for winners,' a contest between rising executives to bring the strangest, goofiest, all-around loser-ific person they can find to dinner. Of course, Steve sees the error of his ways, makes it up to Barry, sacrifices himself to do what is right, and wins both Julie and a new and better job.

It's total crap.

Look, what my brief plot summary didn't mention is that Barry deserves to be at that dinner. (To the extent that anybody deserves such a thing.) From the moment he comes into Steve's life, he has the destructive effect of a tornado. He, all accidentally, I admit, trashes Steve's place, drives his girlfriend away, invites over Steve's stalker, and brings Steve's stalker to Steve's important business meeting, where she trashes his Porsche. Barry basically creates two of the worst days in Steve's life. (Yet another tired movie theme: the utterly unrealistic, over-the-top comic foil. In this case, the emphasis is not on the comic.)

So how does the movie end? Of course Steve and Barry become life-long friends.

I'm tired of two things: 1) this repetitive crappy plotline that keeps appearing in cinemas with the rapidity of an Angelina Jolie action flick, and 2) this idea that's being continually shoved down our throats that reacting in a natural manner to the introduction of a chaotic element into our lives is in some way a bad thing.

When someone walks into your life and ruins your apartment, your job, and your relationship, (Oh, and I forgot, gets you audited, too!) how much does the other person's feelings factor in to your reactions? I always try to take other peoples feelings into consideration, but there is a limit. We'll see this again soon with the release of 'Due Date,' I'm sure, where a guy trying to get to his wife's delivery sees his efforts continually frustrated by the inept yet ultimately loveable and endearing comic foil. There are only so many times something like this can be recycled for our viewing (dis)pleasure, and Hollywood has surpassed that number, I fear.

I can take or leave Steve Carrell, but I'm disappointed in Paul Rudd. I feel his work in '40 Year Old Virgin,' 'Role Models,' and the fourth season of 'Reno: 911' has been superlative. (Plus, he has the 'I'm Attracted to Him So He Can Do No Wrong' factor working in his favor, so imagine my disappointment.) Rudd and Carrell do the best they can with what they're given, and Steve Carrell can certainly play crazy/weird (Let me hear you say 'typecasting.'), but I'm disappointed in Rudd's decision to be in this movie. Meanwhile, Zach Galifianakis is getting on my last damn nerve. I'm not sure I'll touch the aforementioned 'Due Date,' which he is in, with a ten-foot pole. (Which is sad, considering he, too, did some great work on 'Reno:911.')

Look, if you want to see an entertaining feel-good movie with gross humor and the message that you should stop being a self-centered ass and pay attention to the people around you, watch Rudd's other endeavor, 'Role Models.'

However, if you can find the dinner party scene on Youtube!, watch it. Best five minutes of the movie. Actually, really, the only good five minutes of the movie.

Ummm.... Just read the blog.

2010-07-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is an article I wrote for Sara's 'Inspired Quill' blog. For the 'Star Trek' fans reading, you're welcome. For the non-fans reading, I'm sorry. :P

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

In the mid-1960s, Gene Roddenberry imagined a television series set in the future. He originally wanted to call it ‘Wagon Train to the Stars,’ but it eventually made it to television with the title ‘Star Trek.’ ‘Star Trek’ was not just a B-grade science fiction series. I won’t guild the lily: it had a small budget, a main star with some acting difficulties, and a view towards women that was more representative to 1960s America than 23rd century space.

None of that was important, though. What was important was this television series showed viewers what we, humanity, could be. This was a future where there was no racism. There was no Cold War, or ‘hot’ war. Humanity had come together to make Earth a paradise, and while there were threats ‘out there,’ we had made a big step forward as a species and as a civilization.

One of the things Gene Roddenberry always shied away from both in the original ‘Star Trek’ and in the pursuant ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ was war. Space was a dangerous place. People died. In their battle with the Borg, the Federation lost 11,000 lives. Life in the ‘Star Trek’ universe was not perfect, and Roddenberry and the other individuals behind the two series would not insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise. Yet, a prolonged war, one that cost millions of lives and threatened to destroy everything the Federation stood for, was something Roddenberry wanted to avoid.

After Roddenberry’s death, ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ committed the last two seasons of the series to a war between the Federation, and other Star Trek familiars, and the Dominion. The war was the bloodiest in Federation history, with death, destruction, and moral compromise everywhere you turned. ’DS9’ was right to do this. It was brave, and not a little epic, and it opened up a whole new aspect for the series. It was the right thing to do.

Now, however, I’ve become not a little concerned with what I’ve seen in post-‘DS9’ and post-’Voyager’ novels. Shortly after the completion of the ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ series, John Vornholt published his ‘Genesis Wave’ trilogy. In this trilogy, terrorist forces use Carol Marcus’ Genesis technology to create a destructive genesis wave that consumes several planets, killing billions. As one admiral in the novel says, ‘In five minutes we lost more people than in the entire Dominion War.’

Then, there came a new line of novels that followed on the events in the ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ finale. The continuity between these novels was impressive, especially as they were mostly written by different authors. The novels chronicle the lead-up to a massive attack on the Federation by Borg forces, dedicated to eradicating the Federation after the events of ‘Endgame.’ Culminating in the, admittedly, incredibly written ‘Destiny’ trilogy by David Mack, the Borg murder 63 billion people, including the entire populations of Deneva and Risa, and destroy 40% of Starfleet. (This includes Tom Paris’ dad.) Subsequent novels have followed this continuity, as the Federation rebuilds.

‘Endgame’ was supposed to feature the destruction of the Federation’s most dangerous enemy. Instead of following in that vein, a new continuity has been produced which uses those events as the catalyst for 63 billion deaths.

63 billion.

This was all bad enough. So imagine my upset earlier today when I found a new ‘Star Trek’ novel entitled ‘The Needs of the Many,’ by Michael A. Martin. In it, with ‘co-author’ Jake Sisko, the story of the war between the Federation and Species 8472 is told. In it, a war like no other is fought between the two powers, with massive death and destruction as a result. The Federation almost loses everything it stands for just to ensure its survival.

These may not all be in the same continuity. The ‘Destiny’ trilogy does not refer to the events of ‘Genesis Wave,’ and, admittedly, I haven’t and won’t read ‘The Needs of the Many.’ I don’t want to read about any more death and destruction in the ‘Star Trek’ world. ‘Star Trek’ has always been my happy place. I watch it when I’m feeling badly, and I’ve read more ‘Star Trek’ novels than I can number. There’s something special about ‘Star Trek.’ With the exception of the two-seasons long Dominion War, the ‘Star Trek’ universe has never been a war-consumed reality like ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ This is not meant as an insult to these series, it’s just this is not what ‘Star Trek’ is about. ‘Star Trek’ has always been about the inherent goodness in man, about our ability to rise above our basest natures, to work together, to explore and discover and reveal everything we can.

The weapons on Federation starships have never been meant for war, but for self-defense.

So, it’s my hope that as a new continuity is created and fostered in the new ‘Star Trek’ movie franchise, the true nature of Roddenberry’s vision will return to the forefront. (The new ‘Star Trek’ is not immune, either, as it chronicles the destruction of Vulcan and the deaths of 6 billion Vulcans. Hopefully this will prove a one-off, with a substantially smaller death toll in the next film.) As long as there is ‘Star Trek,’ there will be phasers and photon torpedoes. It’s time, though, for those who are not just fans but Trekkies to demand that ‘Star Trek,’ in written or visual form, return to the ideas that defined ‘Star Trek,’ that made it something special that has lasted for 44 years, with greatness not just behind it but ahead of it.

Make it so.

Homage to Malthus

2010-07-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

I want to get serious about something that I think isn't getting much air time, even though it needs to be shouted from the rooftops for all to hear. I won't sit here and present myself as a genius or as someone with some sort of prophetic foresight, but there's a problem out there that I don't think is getting enough attention, and it's so blatantly obvious, I can't help but sometimes think maybe my glasses are magic.

What's the problem? There are too many people on this planet. And the problem is only getting worse.

I once heard it said that the carrying capacity of the planet is one billion people. That means one billion people with a middle-class lifestyle: not wealthy, but well-fed, clothed, sheltered, with satisfactory access to necessities and a healthy level of discretionary items. I'm not sure how much wiggle room that leaves us. But it certainly doesn't allow for a world population of six billion (and rising). This is something I've been thinking about for some time. Indeed, my biggest fear about the future, about my children's futures, is the idea of what sort of world we'll be living in.

Thomas Malthus once postulated that the human population grows far faster than food production. Indeed, past a certain point, food production cannot keep up with an increase in the human population. Famine would follow. But let's superimpose Malthus' ideas on more than just food production.

Take for instance energy. My parents are pretty bad at turning off electrical items when they leave the room (or the house). As it's the South, and it's July, it's really hot. Everyone's air conditioners are running full-out, and the chances are good of suffering brown outs. For those not in the know, brown outs are black outs caused not by damage or some sort of catastrophic failure, but because the use of electrical utilities are too much for the power supplier to handle. In a situation where an area is running air conditioning nonstop, as well as other appliances like refrigerators, and such items as televisions or computers, a lot of juice is being used up.

Now, there are a lot of new technologies geared towards producing clean energy. Hydro power, solar power, and wind power, as three examples. But there is still a reliance on fossil fuels. And, of course, we use fossil fuels to power everything from go-carts to cars to buses. And the more people there are on the planet, the greater the need for this dwindling resource. The same goes for living space, adequate shelter, medical resources, and water, to name but a few. It's been said that World War III will not be fought over land, but over water.

Overpopulation seems to occur primarily in impoverished areas (which merely exacerbates the problems of poverty). This is likely because poor people don't have as much access to family planning. You see, I support a woman's right to choose, not just because I think a woman deserves to have control over her own body, but because it is a form of population control that this planet, as mercenary as it may seem, is really in need of. (Let me state, categorically, that I would much rather see the world's population using the pill and condoms than to see abortion used as a means of birth control. As strange as it may seem, you can support abortion without liking it, and, believe me, I don't like it.) So, the right wing conservative movement in the USA, which, under Bush, refused to give human aide to Africa if that aide included money for family planning, have done serious harm to both these African regions, and the world at large. The world has been made to suffer serious repercussions because of the Far Right, far beyond the more immediate and recognizable repercussions of lack of medicine and food.

At most, the world can support forty billion people. Now, that's if the bark off trees becomes a primary staple of many peoples' diets, if we only have one set of clothing each, if most of us have no access to potable water, and if we live cheek-by-jowl. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live that kind of life. And I don't want my kids living that life.

But there's the rub. How can I see this problem, then exacerbate it by bringing more children into this world? My answer? Well, as simplistic, and possibly ridiculous, as it seems, the best idea I have is to have only one child. That way, my husband and I, when we pass, will have left one person to fill our two spots. In our own small way, we've decreased the human population. This might not be the PC thing to say, but I think China had the right idea in this. (It's just too bad about.... Well, you know. Don't make me say it.)

So, no, there is no simple answer. I can't provide one here. I'm good at asking questions to which I do not have the answers. However, surely the brightest of minds will concede that an increased access to birth control and family planning throughout the world would help. So, too, would limiting family sizes. (When I hear about couples have ten children in this day of age, I shudder. To those of you reading with large families, I apologize, but I won't lie.) And as to conserving resources, regardless of the size of a population, that amounts simply to using less. The size of the average American family has decreased in the last fifty years (Yay!), while the size of the average American home has increased. That's a 'WTF?' moment if ever there was one. Let us remember that there are many resources that are not renewable. Even resources that are, such as lumber, still shouldn't abused. Less is more people, whether it's house size or family size.

Of course, there's the problem of an increasingly large elderly population depending on an equal sized youth population to take care of them. But you don't want to hear my opinions on that. Just read Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, and you'll get an idea of what's in the darker regions of my mind.

And so the linear progression will continue....

My Fulbright Year, Part II: Emotions and Regrets

2010-07-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been more than the 'couple' of days wait I quoted for the second part of this blog, but it's been so crazy getting ready to leave Leicester tomorrow. It goes without saying, I think, that I'm going to miss this place like crazy. This is the first place I ever feel I truly built a home. I built something beautiful here, and I'm loathe to leave it. But perhaps the finite nature of time spent in any place or in any endeavor is what makes it so special. If I were to live at 75 Regent Road for twenty years, with all the same wonderful people, we probably wouldn't consider each other too wonderful after a while.

It's easy at a time like this to look back and create a list of regrets, and I can't claim not to have been doing it myself. I have three particular regrets that haunt me more than any:

1) Not being better with my money.

2) Not attending LUT (Leicester University Theater) projects until second term.

3) Not spending more time with my fellow Fulbrighters.

But I could beat myself up all day about 'what might have beens.' As my chaplain says, what's in the past is in the past. It can't be changed, and we need to move on. My grandmother says that regret is a wasted emotion. However, I think there's something to be said for holding on to a regret, so that you won't ever end up making the same mistake a second time.

This has been a fairly rough year as emotions go. I had a major emotional breakdown when I moved to England from the States. Leaving my comfort zone had a devastating impact on me, and I cried from Memphis to Minneapolis to Reykjavik to London, and for quite a while in London, too. I almost went home. It was a really rough time for me. What we eventually ended up realizing was that I was bipolar. That bites, but, hey, at least we figured it out. And it probably wouldn't have been diagnosed and dealt with if I hadn't moved here, so I owe Leicester and Fulbright a great deal of thanks.

Nothing that my mind can do can traumatize me more than leaving my friends behind. I never had a social network like the one I've had in Leicester, and I truly feel that some of the friends I've made here are people I will be in touch with for years. Being a part of LUT was one of the best experiences of my life. Not only did I meet some truly incredible people, but being a part of this group reaffirmed my belief in my dramatic abilities. After the horrific experience that was Ole Miss theater, I could never be more thankful to LUT for that. It has been a self-esteem booster unprecedented in the history of man. (I do like a little hyperbole.)

This isn't the most cogent of my blogs, nor have my last few blogs been Pulitzer-worthy, but I blame the emotional upheaval of the past few weeks for it. Too many goodbyes, too many 'last times,' too many tears. I have never been good with goodbyes, and I certainly don't plan on saying one here. Let me just finish by saying that my time in Leicester, and in the Channel Islands, has been the best of my life. No matter what comes to me in this life, whether it be long or short, adventurous or mundane, lonely or crowded, this has been ten months like no other. It will forever be a very special time in my life.

Word.

My Fulbright Year, Part 1: Academia

2010-07-05T02:08:00.000-07:00

It's been just about ten months since I moved to England, and as I look back, it seems to have all gone by much too quickly. As I prepare for my return to the States, a return which I will unabashedly say I am not looking forward to, I find myself thinking about everything that has happened. It's been one hell of a ride, if not always a good one. But it goes without saying that no rational person can go through such an experience and not be changed.

So, what have I learned about myself in the last ten months? Let's start with academia:

I was so stressed with academia, it's no surprise that my 'year off' became two-and-a-half, and I'm not sure I would have returned to school had I not won the Fulbright. And if I'm honest, I have to say that this academic year has concreted my belief that academia and I just don't get along well enough for me to spend my life in it. I won't name names, or classes, but I admit to a complete and total (Pardon the language.) 'Fuck it!' moment during my year, a moment at which I realized, this just wasn't going to work, not in the long-term, at least. (It happened during a class, and it was like ants in my pants waiting for it to be over before I exploded.)

It's frightening to spend so much time in school, so much time fighting to win a Fulbright, and then receiving and living abroad on said Fulbright, and then finding that it's just not for you. Starting over--finding something new--is not an easy thing to do.

But there it is: I, as indecisive as I often am, have decided not to pursue a Ph.D. in history, or any other subject, because I have no intention of remaining in academics or of teaching. Of course, everything is subject to change, and I may decide on my 37th birthday that I would like to teach. That's fine. I welcome that change of heart, if it comes, and if it's genuine. But in this, I find myself thinking of something my Fulbright advisor told me a few months back: 'Part of this whole thing is about giving students a chance to take a year and discover themselves, to come closer to understanding who they are and what they want.' (Paraphrased slightly. I wish I'd recorded it.) Fulbright has certainly worked for me in that regard.

(I just want to take a minute to completely ruin the continuity of this piece, and thank Fulbright for their support, especially when my project and planning were altered. It's a great program that can give people as much money and as many opportunities as they do, and still be malleable enough to recognize that humans, and their endeavours, are in a constant state of flux and change. I can't speak for all the Fulbrighters, but I know I'm very happy with the support I got from Fulbright. It's too bad my academic department seems lacking in this regard. Just another reason why I know this isn't for me.)

So what am I going to do? Well, and here's where you laugh/shake your head/roll your eyes, but it looks like I'm headed into another academic program. I'm returning to my alma mater to earn an MA in sociology. Now, I won't lie and say that I'm 'cock-of-the-hoop' about it. I don't want to stay in academia, and I don't want to go back to Mississippi. But, as the lady once said, 'You may not like the medicine, but it's the only way the patient is going to get better.'

First, I'm glad that, of all the programs I could go into, I'm going into sociology, where I can have (and have had) a conversation with the head of department about how much I dislike academia, how commercialized it has become, and how it's become a place where people are expected to go, whether or not it's what's best for them.

Second, sociology opens up a lot of doors for finding a job after finishing your degree, jobs that aren't under the academic umbrella. Think of sociology as almost a vocational school, I guess.

Third, I have discovered what I want to do with my life. I want to write. I want to be able to support myself and my family with my writing, a skill I think I'm right in claiming I have in abundance. Well, the next two years will give me plenty of opportunity for that, as I can write for my school newspaper and the local arts and life section of the town newspaper. I'll continue blogging, and writing creatively, and even continuing writing plays for 'Proteus,' even though I'll sadly be thousands of miles away when they're performed.

So, I think I have a plan. And during these two years, I'm going to get my financial situation sorted out so I can return to England, in triumph, and make my life here.

Well, I never wanted this blog to be a place where I just talked about myself, and I can tell it's not of the better written ones, either. (Ironic, as I've just been praising my writing abilities.) I guess I just wanted to put out there the ways in which this last year have benefited me. This year has been important and special, and will be like no other year I'll ever have in my life. I appreciate the ways it's changed me.

These have been my thoughts on academia, and how my Fulbright year has fundamentally altered the way I look at it. My next blogs, which should follow in a day or two (I don't want to leave you all in suspense. LOL.), will look at the way this last year has changed me socially and emotionally. I'll have to think about just how much of my soul I want to reveal on that one.

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

(This is an addition added to this blog the next day.)

I really am concerned that this blog is really lacking in something that makes it relevant or, indeed, even interesting. I think something that got lost in this is the idea that I have long felt like I was being herded towards something I didn't want for myself. As easy as it is to blame the parents, with this one, the blame does fall on them. History was something I majored in as a 'back-up' for my theatre degree. I decided, on my own accord, not to pursue a life in theatre. The decision to pursue a career in history was mostly my parents', and I went along out of either laziness or compliance. Either way, 'How's that working for you?'

The second point that I think this piece might have missed is the idea that university, academia, in fact, is not meant for everyone. I'm not too sure of the situation in Britain, but in America, it seems like it's become part of the American Dream for everyone to go to university. Nobody stops to consider if a person will get the most out of university, or if their path leads elsewhere. Also, it seems like university has become something that, because one can afford it, is expected of you. It seems we, the prospective students, actually have very little say in the matter.

The third point is that I believe university has become a setting in which we are programmed with the idea that we have to find a certain job and become a certain part of society, which, in effect, basically makes us drones. Lewis Black, in 'Accepted,' said that the process merely creates a new generation of buyers and sellers, of 'pimps and whores.' Michael Moore, talking not about education but about the healthcare system, talked about how companies and businesses have used medical insurance as a means of crowd control. You have to get a good education so you can get a good job which has good medical benefits, otherwise you die.

university education --> awful job ( with medical insurance) --> docile worker and member of society

I feel I've gone from missing my point entirely to rambling. These are thoughts that have been running around my head for some time. Indeed, I was talking about 'pimps and whores' to the head of my department months before I even knew I'd gotten the Fulbright. (I'm nothing if not shameless.) It's just that all these ideas come together, perhaps not beautifully but functionally, at least, to make a picture of all the problems I see with academia, and, therefore, with my place in it.

Spotlight on the Channel Islands (please)

2010-06-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you in the know, the whole reason I'm in the UK is because I won a Fulbright to come to this country and pursue my project, which is on the German Occupation of the British Channel Islands in World War II. (Quite a mouthful.) Now, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with the Islands, but I feel protective of them, as anyone who read my earlier blog on the Barclay brothers is aware. This feeling actually predates my first visit to the Islands, and has actually become a part of me. (That's not quite right, but it's a weird/interesting feeling I'm not sure I could adequately describe.) Suffice it to say, I love the Islands, and I sing their praises wherever I can, and share their history with anyone who will listen. Here is some of it:

The steps of St. Paul's are made of Guernsey granite.

The two main Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, were on opposite sides of the English Civil War, and St. Helier, Jersey, was the first place Charles II was proclaimed king. Charles II was so thankful to the governor of the island that he gave him a grant of land in the New World, and hence the name, 'New Jersey.'

Victor Hugo spent years on both major islands while exiled from France. He wrote large tracts of Les Miserables while on Guernsey, and he wrote on the dedication page of Toilers of the Sea: 'I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality, to this corner of old Norman land where resides the noble little people of the sea, to the Island of Guernsey, severe and yet gentle….'

The island of Sark was the last feudal government in Western Europe.

Guernsey and Jersey were bombed by the Luftwaffe over two months sooner than the British mainland, and were subsequently the first true victims of the Blitz.

The occupation of the Islands lasted from late-June and early-July (Each island was occupied on a separate day. Sark was occupied on July 4th. Dame Sibyl Hathaway's husband, Robert, an American by birth, was observed to say, 'It's a damn funny day to find oneself occupied.') of 1940 to May of 1945, making it one of the longest occupations in the war. In fact, they were liberated the day after (In Sark, two days after.) V-E Day in Europe.

I want everyone and their mother to know about the Islands, especially about their experience in the Second World War. So much of what happened to Great Britain during WWII is common knowledge, learned at a young age in a context outside of the classroom, and we don't know how we learned about the Blitz, just that we know about it. (The Blitz is one example of many.) It's all part of a greater idea of what Britain experienced during the War.

So imagine my (continuing) surprise at how little attention the Islands' war experience gets. (I sometimes wonder if there's something diabolical or, at least, purposeful in this, but a fully fleshed out argument of 'yea' or 'nay' in this regard is beyond me at this moment.) This surprise, and, yes, distress, was evermore apparent in me today when I was examining a newly printed edition (The book was initially published in 2004.) of a work on the civilian experience in wartime Britain in the bookstore today. (Do I turn my blog into a publicity site for a particular bookstore? Hmmm.... Let me get back to you on that.) The book, including prologue and acknowledgments, but not the notes, bibliography, or index, came to 692 pages. This book, heralded by critics as a masterpiece and as the definitive analysis of the civilian experience from the 'Orkney Islands to Cornwall, from Belfast to the Welsh valleys,' had two paragraphs about the Channel Islands.

Two paragraphs. This 692-page book, dedicated to the civilian experience of wartime Britain, and seemingly a good one at that, spends two paragraphs looking at (Perusing might be a better word.) the only experience of English-speaking people under German occupation in the entirety of the war. That sentence should end with a question mark so you can hear the incredulity with which I say it.

As I said before, I'm not going to try and analyze 65 years of history and figure out whether or not there's a conscious, or insidiously unconscious, desire to ignore this particularly painful part of Britain's war experience. It's beyond my ability to do so. Whatever the reason, it has to stop. It's also beyond my ability at this moment to flesh out a way to make it stop, apart from simply saying to current and future scholars of the Second World War: 'Stop ignoring the Channel Islands!' Eloquent in its simplicity, but jokes and quirky means of making a point aside, the wartime experience of the Channel Islands deserves so much more attention than it gets. This topic deserves not two paragraphs in a book of this sort, but a more sizable chunk that recognizes its sheer enormity to the British war experience, and how the War is remembered in Britain. (Let me know if you want to know more, and I can suggest titles.)

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep running my mouth....

World Cup

2010-06-19T05:13:00.000-07:00

'I'm going to make somebody maaaaaad when I say this.' -- Tyler Perry

I'm going to try and keep this post short, because I don't want this to be a forum where I just bitch and moan, but I feel that I have something to say and a right to say it. That is: I'm getting a little pissed about this football atmosphere.

I don't mind the excitement or preoccupation with it. Far from it. I consider myself very lucky to be in England the year the World Cup is on. It's doubly cool, and I'm doubly excited, that I can also be here for the USA's first time playing in the World Cup. I've never been a football (American or otherwise.) fan before, but the excitement is contagious, and, when I watch matches with my friends, I feel myself genuinely interested in the outcome.

So you can imagine how disappointing it is when my own friends ruin it for me.

Surely it comes as no surprise to know that I supported the USA against England last week. (Originally, I had planned on supporting England, since I'm living here, and the English fans almost certainly want it more than the Americans, but after John Oliver took the piss out of my country's team, I switched allegiances.) I use the word 'surely' on purpose, because there is no part of me, on any level, who thinks that that should be a surprise, or anything an England fan should find fault with. If they do, consider me at a total loss to understand why.

So you can imagine how disappointing it is when my own friends ruin it for me. (I repeat for emphasis, not any memory loss.)

During the England/USA game, I stood for the British national anthem, out of respect for my adopted home and for the Queen. (Who I like a great deal.) I then remained standing for my country's national anthem, at which point a friend and housemate decided he would spend the rest of the match taking the piss out of me, mocking me, and continually insisting that if the English fans decided to go after me, he wouldn't have my back. I told him that if an England fan in the USA was treated that way for supporting England, I'd be horrified and embarrassed. I also told him that if all England fans were as shitty as he was, it was a sad testament to English character. (I stand by that statement.) He replied that he didn't care what it said about his country.

That's not really the point at which I got pissed off. Yes, I eventually told him to shut up and stop talking to me, but, in all honesty, I was in a bit of a shit mood that day, anyway, and he was basically the last straw. England and the USA tied, and I was happy enough to see that the American team had established themselves as respectable players. Yee-haw!, as we've been known to say in the South.

It was last night's game that was the last straw, and why I feel my blood boil each time I see my housemate pass in the corridor. I decided to support Algeria last night, because I didn't want my Nigerian friend to feel like he was the only one in the house supporting an African team. Of course, my other housemate took exception to this. (He considered my behavior 'controversial,' his word, not mine, rather than supportive.) We were sitting near each other, and every time I would cheer for the Algerian team, he would make a joke about how he wasn't going to be able to stop from hitting me. I told him if he hit me, I'd call the cops. (Yes, that's about as bitchy and pathetic a threat as one can make, but I would never, under any circumstances, let him get away with such behavior, so my choices were either call the authorities, or hit him back, and I wasn't about to risk getting into a fight and breaking my glasses.) At half time, I moved to a different seat.

The final straw came when another housemate said, 'Wouldn't you be pissed if he were supporting a team you didn't like?' (This from a Canadian supporting England. Get off!) The answer to that is a categorical 'No!' Not in the least! It's his right! I might engage in a little good-nature teasing, not of him/her, but of the team, but constant caustic comments and threats of violence? I can honestly say: never.

Well, this has already gotten much longer than I had intended it to be. I complain enough vocally that the last thing I need to do is start complaining in the written form. I'm honest enough to admit that I'm new to the sports-fan world, and I'm technically still a guest there, not a permanent resident, so maybe this is the sort of behavior one has to expect. (If so, then I will never be a permanent resident.) I used to think how awesome the world would be if every time two countries were unhappy with each other, their respective sports teams settled the conflict on the playing field, rather than the battlefield. But I have to say, I hope like hell that this sort of behavior, of repeated snide comments and threats of violence, are the exception and not the norm. I have to believe it is. I have too much respect for England, Britain, and the British people to think otherwise.

Sombreros off, though, to my good friend 'D,' for coming to Shampoo screaming, 'Viva Mexico! Viva Felipe Calderon!' Nice.

The Works of John Wyndham

2010-06-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

As those of you who read my blog with any regularity (Why should you, as I don't write it with any sort of regularity?) know, I'm a pretty huge sci-fi fan, and a very proud one, at that. My last blog slammed Kevin Smith for reinforcing the stereotype of sci-fi fans as overweight, antisocial weirdos who live in their parents' basements while they prepare for the zombie apocalypse. (Why do so many people spend so much time worrying about zombies, when nuclear obliteration is so much more likely to destroy civilization? Or a particularly lethal germ?)

I love science fiction, and that includes some of the silly things like the 'not-even-psuedo-science-craziness' that was '2012.' (But let me give a shout out to whatever CGI company created those awesome special effects!) I've read, or tried to read, my fair share of awful science fiction novels, like 'The Centauri Device.' (How that managed to make its way onto the Sci-Fi Masterworks list, I'll never know.) But these tongue-in-cheek movies and the people who dress up as Orions for Star Trek conventions (I will go to a convention, but I will never dress up for it. The line is clearly defined.) have somehow hogged the spotlight, and defined the science fiction genre.

Let me state, categorically, that science fiction has style and class. Science fiction at its conception, in the late 18th century, was born of such authors as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and was continued through the exceptional works of authors like Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ursala K. LeGuin, and Philip K. Dick, to name but a few. 'Star Trek' was not just about spaceships fighting it out or scantily clad women. (Though, by God, there were many of those!) 'Star Trek' served as an analogy for a culture that was in desperate need of hope and the promise of a better future. It portrayed a future where men and women, of all races, worked together in harmony, and Earth was a peaceful, plentiful paradise. (Alliteration is my friend.) Martin Luther King, Jr. himself told Nichelle Nichols she had to remain on 'Star Trek.' Having a black woman in a position of authority was, in King's opinion, something that must be kept.

Well, I feel I'm a little off-topic. This was actually supposed to be a review of three of John Wyndham's books. (What can I say? I never miss an opportunity to sing science fiction's praises.)

John Wyndham is another torch bearer for science fiction in the twentieth century. A British author, Wyndham (1903-1969) wrote several science fiction novels. They are witty, intelligent works that never insult the author or devolve into cheap tricks or ploys, and there's yet to be a space battle in any of them. In fact, the novels I've read have all taken place on Earth.

I read 'The Day of the Triffids' some time ago, but I've recently read three of his works, 'The Kraken Wakes,' 'The Midwich Cuckoos,' and 'The Chrysalids.' In short, 'Kraken' deals with humanity's battle with an alien race that has colonized our oceans and declared war on our species. (The results of rising sea levels in the book are a spooky foreshadowing of what we may ourselves see.) 'Cuckoos,' which was turned into the film 'Village of the Damned,' (I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on whether it's classy or lowly science fiction, but, either way, it has its place.) involves the simultaneous, and likely alien-induced, pregnancies of every woman in Midwich, the birth of their strange children, and the terror that grips a village when a hive mind begins to develop. And 'Chrysalids' takes place centuries from now, in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, where radiation, and, it is hinted, natural evolution, have altered humanity in ways never imagined. In the remains of Northeastern Canada, a village of puritanical religious forces rule a society where any deviation from the 'norm' is punished by death. What, then, are our telepathic protagonists to do?

I wanted to take some time to sing Wyndham's praises in hopes that someone reading this blog might be tempted to try one of his books. (Why none of them has made it onto the Sci-Fi Materworks list is beyond me, but I guess the list isn't infallable. Look at the aforementioned 'The Centauri Device.' Sheer crap.) By going so off topic, I fear I might have distracted you from this blog's original intent. But I hope anybody out there who still isn't convinced that science fiction is a legitimate, hard-hitting, high-brow, amazingly stupendously fantastically great genre will read something by Wyndham (Or Wells!), and realize that science fiction is more than just Orion sex slaves and end-of-the-world movies.

Science fiction is the ultimate classic.

How the Cancellation of 'Flash/Forward' is Proof the World is Ending

2010-06-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's natural for anyone and everyone to be totally disappointed and not a little pissed (Angry, not drunk.) when one of their favorite TV shows is cancelled. In this, I am no exception, and any fair person would grant me my right to be mad as hell that 'Flash/Forward' has been cancelled.

However, I think there's something ominous about the cancellation of 'Flash/Forward.' The cancellation of 'FF' is part of a worrisome trend I see happening in today's media world.

First the facts: 'FF' wasn't just a drama, it was a science fiction drama. Sadly, being deemed a 'sci-fi' show can often be the deathknell of a series. (Props to 'Lost' for making it six seasons.) Science fiction has never received the respect it deserves, and science fiction fans are all too often regarded as pale, pudgy, asocial freaks living in their parents' basement. (Thank you, Kevin Smith, for reinforcing the stereotype in 'Live Free or Die Hard.') But my rant about the disrespect we sci-fi nerds face every day is a topic for a different blog entry. Suffice it to say, a clear-cut drama revolving around the FBI, with all the accompanying characters, would probably have stood a better chance. (Because the 1,455 cop shows we have on television right now just aren't enough.)

Another cold hard fact about 'FF's' cancellation was that it was put in a crap spot in the American weekly line-up ('An anti-science fiction conspiracy?' I hear you whisper.), and the 2010 Winter Olympics would have done us all a favor by being the 2011 Winter Olympics, instead of hobbling a new show right out of the starting gate.

So, I've listed two logistical reasons for 'FF's' cancellation, and one reason that sucks, but, hey, what can I do about it besides sing science fiction's praises, as I already do? However, I see something much more ominous in 'FF's' cancellation. It suggests to me that people's attention spans are getting even shorter than we had previously thought.

We live in a world of soundbite news and entertainment. Though soundbite news lacks depth, brevity is a necessary evil in the field, as even our 24-hour news cycle can't always keep up with all the things, good and bad (Though mostly bad, it seems.), going on in the world. But for entertainment, television audiences seem to be reaching for the 'dumbed down' programs.

'What's my evidence?' you ask. This certainly isn't something I could prove without doing years of research in media and psychology, but here's how I see it:

1) Science fiction programs not only suffer from an undeserved bias against them, but they require a great deal of attention and patience that today's viewing audience aren't geared to have.

2) Serials don't seem to last long these days, except in the field of soap operas. (And I will not discuss those purile, if secretly delicious, programs.) A serial program is one where the plot of one episode is important to the plot of the next, and so on and so on. Episodes can't always stand alone in these shows. True, this makes for greater difficulty in coming in to a show mid-season, or at the beginning of seasons two or three, but with DVDs and the proclivity of television shows on the web, 'research' into what you've missed is not difficult. It's simply the attention span of the average viewer, which can't be invested in a topic long enough to keep up with a serial. (I am still not over the cancellation of 'Jericho,' and at least that season was allowed some closure. No such luck with 'FF.')

3) Our entertainment and amusement palates seem to be altering, as well, and not for the better. 'Reality' TV and vulgar comedies seem to be the staple of choice these days. (I'll bet £50 that 'M.A.S.H.,' a popular seventies comedy set in the Korean War, and which ran for eleven years, couldn't last in today's market. We don't want to laugh and think at the same time.) Shows don't even go into reruns over the summer like they used to. Rather, they are replaced in the lineup by these reality TV shows and gameshows. Now, I like a good 'Family Guy' fart joke as much as the next guy, but I like to think I temper this aspect of my personality with shows that require a little more maturity and inner-depth. Hell, even 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' makes you think.

Now, I don't watch as much television as you may think. (I actually watch more.) I don't know everything, and maybe I'm a little jaded at the moment because of 'FF' going off the air. I'm sure there are examples out there of television shows that are seriously high-brow, that require so much of the viewer's attention, they forget to control their bowels while the show is on. (Talk about an awkward commercial break.) Yet, in a world where even the History Channel has devolved into 'Ice Road Truckers' and endless programs on end-of-the-world predictions, a show like 'FF,' a show that requires attention, patience, and mystery-like supposition on the part of the viewer, just doesn't seemed destined to last.

One has to take a step back and wonder if media might not prove to be a window into the minds and personalities of the viewers.

'Mission of Gravity,' by Hal Clement

2010-05-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my second blog a desire to review all the works in the Sci-Fi Masterworks series, as a way of making my blog unique and interesting. Unfortunately, I quickly came to realize that this wouldn't be possible, not because of a lack of desire or time to do the reading, but because I simply could not hope to purchase so many books. Even the use of local libraries wouldn't help me get my hands on all the titles.

However, I recently checked one book of the series out of the library, and while I know my goal of reviewing the entire series has to be at least postponed, if not canceled, I wanted to write about this particular novel, in hopes that I might convince others to read it.

The book in question is Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity (MIG). I'm surprised I hadn't at least heard of MIG at some point. It's more than just a really good book, it's a collection of ideas and imaginings that really explode on the page. Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels says of MIG, 'A popular and long-lived work... an impressive feat of world-building... a touching adventure story... written with hearty conviction.'

MIG tells the story of Barlennan, 'Barl,' the captain of a trading vessel on the planet Mesklin. A technologically undeveloped species, the Mesklinites have evolved on a world that would seem wholly unsuitable for intelligent life. The 'air' is pure hydrogen, the seas are made of methane, and the planet's shape, closer to that of a discus than to a sphere, creates a crushing gravity hundreds of times that of Earth's, where the fall of an inch can kill a Mesklinite. The world revolves on its axis so quickly, there are over 80 Mesklinite days for every Earth day. As if survival on this world wasn't hard enough, Barl and his people are caterpillar-like creatures. Their planet is referred to as the largest in existence, and it is up to a species the size of a caterpillar to explore it.

Yet Barl and his crew do quite well exploring this world, moving all the way out to their planet's equator, where they are contacted by aliens (humans), who need help recovering a lost probe on the planet's south pole, not too far from Barl's home and eventual return. (It is not fully explained why, but the human characters allude to their contact with Barl as being fortuitous, as contacting other Mesklinites would, for some reason, have been impossible.) It seems a fortunate offer for Barl, who has much to gain from helping a species so much more advanced than his own.

It is Barl's journey from the equator that gives the novel its plot and adventure. Barl's ship is a conglomeration of rafts pieced together, spanning a length of forty feet and a width of twenty, that floats upon the methane sea. (Imagine, for a moment, a caterpillar on a forty-foot raft crossing the Atlantic Ocean, let alone an ocean on the largest planet known to man. Can you imagine what just a strong wind could do to it?)

It's Barl's journey that makes this book such a great read. The adventures themselves aren't hair-raising, but Clement combines the elements of Asimov's The God's Themselves with the theme of Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to tell the story of this fascinating species and the sheer enormity of their undertaking. The perils of man in space seem to be humbled by the perils the Mesklinites face as they explore their own planet.

This great combination of science fiction and fantastical storytelling, along with one of the most intriguing, and perhaps bravest, species I have ever come across in science fiction makes MIG a great, even necessary, work for science fiction fans, and I'm glad I finally discovered it.

The 'It' Moment

2010-05-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

I almost didn’t go on this trip to Guernsey. The volcano in Iceland had seriously disrupted travel across Europe and beyond, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk getting stuck. With hundreds of thousands of people trying to get back in to Britain, I felt like a fool for leaving.

In the end, though, I knew I had to take the risk. I’d been invited to the annual Guernsey Deportees Association meeting. It was an incredible opportunity to meet the people who had lived through what I was now doing my Fulbright project on. Plus, 2010 marked a special meeting. That same day, a new memorial was unveiled for those deportees from Guernsey and neighbouring Sark who had never returned from Germany.

I guess I’ve jumped ahead in my story. Guernsey is part of a group of islands collectively referred to as the Channel Islands. These islands, which include Guernsey and its neighbours, Jersey, Sark, Alderney, and Herm, are far closer to France than to Great Britain. The Channel Islands were part of William the Conqueror’s holdings when he invaded England, and though the English holdings in France would all be gone by the 1550s, the islands have always elected to remain a part of the kingdom.

Because of their vicinity to France, the islands fell to the German army in the Second World War, and endured an occupation that lasted for four years and eleven months. During that time, the people of the Channel Islands suffered deprivation, worry, a loss of contact with loved ones abroad, and, for some, deportation to Germany as prisoners-of-war. Sixteen of those deported, including three children, did not survive their internment.

Returning to the 23rd of April, St. George’s Day, and the day of the unveiling ceremony, I was in St. Peter Port, Guernsey’s capital, just past the Liberation Memorial. In the distance sat Castle Cornet, and beyond, in the hazy distance, you could just make out Sark. Those of us gathered for the ceremony could not have asked for better weather. The people there seemed touch that I had come so far to study their experience, and I began to realize just how important my research has the potential to be.

As the ceremony progressed, and the names of those who had never returned from Germany were read aloud, flowers were placed before the plaque by friends and family who, after more than sixty years, still remember. I suddenly found myself choked up. There was a knot in my throat, and my eyes became so misty I could not see. I have never been one to suppress my feelings, but, there, at that time, I forced it back in. It didn’t seem right. This was their moment. It belonged to those who had lived it, and those who had died in it. Would my tears be sympathetic or pitying? Why was I so emotional?

After the ceremony, I travelled to the annual meeting, where I was stuffed full of good food and better conversation. One of the people I sat with was my friend Dudley, who had been born in Biberach, Germany, and an elderly couple; he had been deported, she had been evacuated in the days leading up to the occupation of the island. I was surrounded by history.

Two years ago I began studying, living, eating, and breathing this subject so I could earn my Fulbright award, and now I study, live, eat, and breathe it so I can write my dissertation on the subject. Yet, there I was, only now understanding what it was to be immersed in it.

Later that day, after the Deportees Association was over, and everyone had gone home to live with their memories, their joys, and their regrets for another year, I trekked off to Jerbourg Point to see some of Guernsey’s beautiful scenery. On my way home, I was torn in two: I was in awe of the absolute splendour I had seen, yet still chilled to the bone by my discovery of the old Nazi bunker, the swastikas still startlingly visible on the threshold. It was then I realized why I had begun to cry earlier that day, and why, as I write this, I once again become teary-eyed.

I had become a part of the history I was studying. I had been there, at that moment in time when the memorial had been unveiled. It was a concrete moment, a link between the past and the future of the history of the occupation. It was a moment that could not and never would be repeated, and I had been there. I would be a part of that small but pivotal moment forever, unchangingly.

I realized later, as well, that that moment had been ‘it,’ the ‘Fulbright moment.’ During the application process, we would-be Fulbright scholars had to explain why we needed their help, why we simply could not do this research, in this way, at this time, without their help. ‘Why did we need Fulbright?’

I had my answer.

You Have (x amount) of Friends

2010-04-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who thinks that Facebook has trivialized the word "friend?"

On the face of it (Pun intended.), Facebook seems like the greatest invention ever for making and staying in contact with friends, but I'm convinced Facebook has actually devalued the idea of friendship. True, Facebook allows friends to message each other in an environment more conducive to enjoyment than basic e-mail, and I admit I really like the "poke" feature. I think it's a great way of letting your (real) friends know that you're thinking about them, even if you don't really have anything to say, and it's a great opportunity for the poked to contact the poker without feeling obligated.

Plus, I just love, love, love talking about myself on my info page.

I argue, though, that the balance sheet still shows a debit on Facebook's account. I'm sure I'm not the only person on Facebook with "friends" he hasn't met, has only met once, or who I haven't seen, spoken to, or even thought about in ages. For a lot of people, this isn't a problem. I know some people who collect "friends," trying to reach.... Well, hell, I have no clue what they're trying to reach, except maybe some sort of internal well-being that few on the outside, and none on the internet, can give a person. (And am I the only one kind of repelled by the idea of "collecting" people, even if it's only represented by a number on a computer screen?)

And then there's the way in which we interact with these friends. Some are true friends, who you stay in touch with constantly, both on- and off-line. There's nothing wrong with being "connected" on Facebook. It's merely a means of friendly contact, no different than if one of you called the other on the telephone to chat, and Facebook's importance to that friendship can then be paramount. (Because of my recent move to the UK, much of my contact with friends back in the States is thanks to Facebook.)

But then there's everyone else on your friends list.

Have you heard of Dunbar's number? Anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests that there is a number of friends that the average human being can have, wherein the individual knows every single one of them reasonably well and, here's the clincher, knows how every friend relates to every other friend. Robin Dunbar suggests that this number is approximately 150, which means I've exceeded the number by 173. Some people I know have exceeded that number by over 1000.

I hear you asking, "What's wrong with having a lot of friends?" Nothing at all. But maybe I've taken one too many theory classes and listened to one too many lectures on the linguistic turn, because this whole topic leaves me thinking about the word "friend," and what it's supposed to mean. If we argue that the word "friend" has a special meaning, that to call someone this word is to imbue someone with a special quality, then doesn't Facebook rob the word of its meaning? Of its power? Doesn't it suggest that to call 1000 people "friend" is to rob 150 of them of something special?

Well, that's just the theoretical side of the argument. Then there's just the way Facebook affects those friendships. ("What, more?" I hear you asking.) Am I the only one who ever felt that a particular person should have been contacting them more, and thus felt ignored, maligned, and undervalued? I'm sure I'm not the only one. After all, doesn't Facebook present us with an easy ability to keep in touch with each other? It creates a situation wherein you can easily contact a "friend," and when you don't, Facebook has also placed stress upon that friendship. Or how about how melodramatically easy it is to remove friends? Isn't ending a friendship supposed to be a difficult thing, one that is not as easy as the click of a mouse?

I won't even talk about the "Favorite Friends" application. We all have friends that are closer than others, but to rank them, out in the open for all to see? Ugh.

Well, that's my theoretical treatise for the day. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'm just not sure that Facebook is healthy for people. I refuse to believe I'm the only person to add someone from high school just so they would see how much better off I'm doing now. I refuse to believe I'm the only person to scroll through my friends list and think, "Who the hell?" I refuse to believe I'm the only person who has had a "friend" whose face I simply didn't want to see on my computer, for whatever reason.

But, of course, this is the 21st century, and I have to contact some folk, so.... Ugh....

Good Old Golden Age Sci-Fi

2010-04-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

Hard science fiction can be a tough sell. I once heard an English professor mock the work of Isaac Asimov as being nothing but stories where scientists in the future sit around and talk about how some particular piece of technology works/worked. A story or novel that relies too heavily on explaining in cringing detail the inner workings of every ‘impulse drive manifold’ or ‘subspace transceiver’ runs the risk of running off its reader. So, when hard fiction is done well, it’s usually done really well.

Such is the case with ‘Industrial Revolution’ and ‘Duel on Syrtis,’ two short stories featured in ‘Two Worlds of Poul Anderson: Science Fiction from the Golden Age.’ Followers of my blog will be familiar with Anderson’s name, after I wrote a short review of his incredible novel, ‘Tau Zero.’ Anderson’s two short stories do not disappoint, either. From revolutionary wars in space to an ‘Avatar-like’ bond between Martian and Mars, these stories are a ripping good yarn.

‘Industrial Revolution’ is told some years after the events in the story, in the best fashion of old school science fiction and mystery pieces, with fireside reminiscences of hard times/cases. It is almost a science fiction retelling of the events in Concord and Lexington in the American Revolutionary War, as Anderson chronicles the moments that unexpectedly lead to a revolutionary movement that changes our Solar System forever. Now, one proviso with this piece: this is ‘golden age’ science fiction at its best, so prepare yourself for a moment or two of old fashioned misogyny. I’m not advocating it or saying I appreciate it, but it is what it is, so female readers, be aware.

‘Duel on Syrtis’ is ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ on Mars. No points for originality in this regard, but the piece beat ‘Avatar’ to the punch in terms of alien-planet symbiosis, and is still a darn good thriller. The Martians are a species that have been brutalized by humanity. The days of enslaving and hunting them are past, and some argue on behalf of full emancipation for them, but, like the Jim Crow-south, some just aren’t having it. Enter Riordan, the story’s big game hunter who wants one last chance to hunt the sentient species while he can still get away with it. Though, again, not a shockingly new plotline, still a thrilling chase through the barren wastelands of a dying world, with a startling and frightening climax.

So, my rating? Let’s say four-and-a-half out of five stars. Absolutely worth the read, and not that much time out of your day, either. In this busy world, as it moves ever more rapidly toward the future, what’s better than some quick sci-fi reads?

How Feudalism Replaced Feudalism

2010-03-30T13:30:00.001-07:00

Earlier today, "The Guernsey Press," the newspaper serving the bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes not just the island itself but the outlying island of Sark, printed an article entitled "Barclays' hold over Sark is of concern." The Barclays in question are David and Frederick Barclay, the reclusive British businessmen whose pockets bulge with cash. Since 1993, they have owned the island of Brecqhou, just of the western coast of Sark. And that's where the trouble lies.

The Barclays are not native to Brecqhou or to Sark. Indeed, they were born in London. Their billions of dollars were not made on Sark, at least not much of it, and certainly not initially. No, they came to the islands rich men, intent on secluding themselves from the rest of the world in their faux-castle with its two swimming pools and its helicopter pad. (The entire island of Sark hasn't any sort of landing strip or pad of its own, be it private or public. Cars aren't even allowed on the island. More on that shortly.)

Let me take a moment to tell you that economically speaking, the Barclays have, in the past, been very good to Sark. A great deal of Barclay money has been invested in Sark. At one time, 140 people were employed in Barclay businesses, and that's a huge proportion of a 600+ population. But here's where things get tricky. Bluntly put, the Barclays seem to think that because they invest in Sark, they own Sark.

The problems began when the Barclays began to insist on democratic reforms on Sark. You see, Sark had been a feudal government for 450 years, and was the last feudal territory in Western Europe. Feudalism is a hard thing to defend, but the feudalism of Sark was as benign as they come. True, divorce was illegal, but other feudal laws included the idea that only the Seigneur, the feudal leader of Sark, could keep an unspayed dog or any doves. Life on the island has long been a pleasant one.

Back to those reforms. The Barclays apparently don't like the control that Sark has over Brecqhou. (That's like the Florida Keys objecting to having to answer to the government in Tallahassee. Meanwhile, I will tell you here and now, this blog will not go into any great detail about the Sarkese government. This blog is not about the Sarkese government. It's about a centuries old way of life being trampled on by two recluses with too much money.) Admittedly, the brothers had to pay 179,000 pounds as an extra, they claim illegal, tax on their purchase of Brecqhou. (Let me remind you again that these men are worth billions. Also, they are tax exiles, preferring to pay taxes not in the UK but in Monaco, where their taxes are substantially cheaper.)

The brothers have clashed with the Sarkese government over the use of cars. (Cars are banned on Sark as a disturbance to the peaceful nature of the island.) They argue that Brecqhou is legally separate from Sark. (That's the first anyone's heard of that in several hundred years.) And since the Barclays don't like Sark's inheritance laws, they claim that such laws were a violation of their basic human rights. (I don't even know what to say about that one. Can't they move to Monaco? They're already paying taxes there.) So, what did they do? They started demanding democratization of the island.

Here's where things get really interesting. Following is a quote from March 27th, 2005, edition of "The Observer:"

"'Sark's feudal lord and his colleagues have enormous power,'" Sir David Barclay told The Observer last week. "'This will continue under their new constitutional changes, because of potential intimidation in a small community where people are often afraid to speak their minds.'"

Sounds good. The Barclays just want to protect the rights of the indigenous Sarkese, right? (I use that word "indigenous" specifically, so place a lot of emphasis on it in your mind.) Umm.... Sark was already on its way to reform of some kind in order to enter into the 21st century with the rest of Britain. By 2008, in hopes of complying with the European Convention on Human Rights, the centuries old feudal government would be replaced with a truly democratic government, with the people of Sark getting a vote in the government of their island.

But 2008 was to prove a watershed moment in the island's history for yet another reason.

The Barclays supported a number of the nominees in Sark's first election, and these nominees held pro-reform (Thus, pro-Barclay.) ideas. Democracy was on course, and the Barclays, like any other person in a democracy, had a side they wanted to win. We all have personal interests in how elections turn out, after all. But when the Barclays found out that their candidates had done quite badly, they reacted, well, badly.

James Robinson of "The Observer" described the brothers' reaction as "a display of petulance." They stated that they would no longer invest any money into Sark's economy, and were closing down the businesses that they owned. Over 100 people, a sizable portion of Sark's population, suddenly found themselves without a job or a means of supporting themselves. The Barclay brothers were mad as hell, and they weren't going to take it anymore. Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, why invest your money in a tyrannical system? That's the rule: do it for fifteen years, then pull out. After an election. That doesn't go your way. Ho-hum.

Money poured in from neighbouring Guernsey and Jersey, as well as hampers of food to help struggling families have a pleasant Christmas. Whoville got on with it, while the Barclay grinches looked on from their castle.

Today, the Barclays are working on developing wine making on Sark. (What's a castle without good wine?) They will have little to do with the day-to-day processes, as they rarely set foot on Sark anymore. No, the Barclays will stay in their faux-castle, trying desperately to convince themselves that they have bettered Sark and the Sarkese people by arguing on behalf of democratic reform. They will try to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with coming into someone else's home, setting themselves up as lords of the manor, altering a centuries old way of life, and brutalizing the locals when they don't get what they want.

Meanwhile, we can only hope that the UK Ministry of Justice, who have been told to watch Sark closely, will see what's really there, on that island off the coast of Sark. The (would-be) new feudal heads of Sark.

Venting; and the use of mass media to do so

2010-03-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've been running into some problems of late on Facebook. You see, I use Facebook to vent. If something isn't going well, or if I'm unhappy about something, I get it off my chest by getting it onto Facebook. Sometimes I embarrass myself, but don't we all embarrass ourselves every now and again? With or without Facebook?

Now, I'm not going to say that my venting is a bad thing. We all need to do it, me especially. I can't hold the good or bad in for too long without losing my mind. The problem is, other people seem to have a problem with it, and I just can't fathom why.

I could understand if people ignored my posts because they found them whiny or annoying. I know sometimes rants can become bouts of self-pity. I try hard not to cross that line, but I'm not perfect, and I know I sometimes do so. I would welcome people asking me what's wrong, giving advice, giving a gentle, avuncular chuck on the chin and an "Aw, shucks, it'll get better." You see, here's where my ego grows three sizes too big: for all my mouthing off and stratospheric volume levels, I'm actually a good listener. I care very much about other people. I will always provide a shoulder to cry on, and I will always be proactive in giving aid to a friend. (It might be codependency, but, if so, I think it's a rather positive aspect of it.) So I will never claim that my rants aren't, at least partly, a request for support or words of advice and encouragement.

What I can't stand are the lectures. I have had people I haven't seen or spoken to in 6 months, who have made no effort to get or stay in contact with me, sending me messages and posts wherein they lecture me like a child. (I won't give examples, because when you provide a laundry list of complaints, that's when you cross the line into self-pity. I know that much, at least.) It's the lectures I can't stand. Do not let the baby face fool you, I am a grown man, and I can think/say/do as I please, within acceptable societal limits. But, you see, the term "grown" is actually a misnomer, in a sense. So much of what I'm experiencing and going through right now is a maturation process that I'm going through later than most people. I'm defining myself, asserting myself, setting up parameters by which I interact with people, what I feel is acceptable for me to do, what it is or is not acceptable for people to do to me. I'm older than I care to admit, but I'm just now learning this.

And that's where a second set of problems comes in. (Recap: the first is that a lot of people seem to have issues with my posts for reasons I still cannot understand.) As I learn how to assert myself, to draw boundary lines and to ensure people aren't crossing them, it's devolved into cat-fights. I try to remain as calm and rational with the lecturers as I can be, responding in as mature and non-confrontational a way as I can. But often, this seems to escalate things. (Nobody likes feeling attacked, and I can understand that.) I posted on my wall a few days ago my parameters, in response to a lecture, basically saying that encouragement, advice, and enquiries into the reasons behind my feelings are all valid and welcome, but that I was sick of lectures. So a "friend" (I have an awkward history with this particular person to begin with.) posts: "So just so I get this straight: only sunny, positive, responses to your rants now?" Things went south from there. (My response? "So just so I get this straight: you're going to start acting like a dick towards me again?" Yeah, not healthy, but spine-tinglingly wonderful.)

Maybe there's just an immense failure of understanding here. Maybe Facebook is simply the wrong medium on which to get things off one's chest. If so, I have to argue that that's a little unfair to people like me who need it for such reasons, but, okay. I can't expect life to give me everything I want. Maybe I don't describe my feelings as adequately as I think I do. (It frightens me to think that that may mean something is wrong with my writing skills.) Maybe I do come across as more self-pityingly than I think. Hmmm.... Well, nobody wants that, least of all me.

But whatever failure to communicate I might be guilty of on my Facebook posts, I have to assert myself here, draw the line and say "This far, no farther." when it comes to lectures. Don't we all want and need a moment to rant, to scream at the universe, to just get it out, without wanting any feedback, good or ill? We all have our "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" moments (Often, we go right on living with it, because that's life, but damn, doesn't it feel good to take a moment to tell life to shove it?), and I doubt that any of us are looking for a lecture about why we're wrong or just how wonderful our life is, certainly not at a moment like that.

I can honestly say, and, yes, I consider this a good thing and am self-complimenting: I wouldn't trod on someone's moment. Scream to the heavens, loudly scream, trying to change your nightmares to dreams. (Thank you Ms. Angelou. Please don't sue for the awkward paraphrasing.) It's all good.

I guess we just can't do it on Facebook anymore. ;)

Mean Girls (...and guys, teachers, children, classmates, et. al.)

2010-03-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

So the question I want to pose tonight is: "Is it acceptable to consciously decide to become meaner?"

I consider myself a nice, easy-going kind of guy. Certainly not perfect, and not necessarily even easy to be around. That's fine, I'm confident enough in myself (Ha!) to admit these things. But I truly believe that I genuinely care a great deal about the needs and feelings of those around me. No, I don't believe it, I know it. So I think it's understandable that my feelings get hurt pretty easily. (The two could be completely unrelated. It might just be a coincidence that I am both kind and sensitive, but I think not.)

So you can understand why it hurts me deeply, and affects me greatly, when someone is mean to me. (Very third grade-ish: "Bobby is being mean to me!," but, still, an appropriate phrasing.) A good example of just plain nastiness is a young woman I know who, for six months now, has barely said two words to me. When I tried (Past tense, because I no longer bother.) talking to her, she wouldn't make eye contact, and looked around like she was trying to find a way out of a burning building. I recently learned that I remind her of someone she dislikes. Someone I've never met, in a place I've never been to, yet I'm being punished for a similarity I have no control over (Beyond utterly and completely changing myself, and can you say, "fuck that?"), and she talks about me behind my back to mutual friends. (Yes, I spend more time than I like to admit wondering just what they do/say in response.)

I could go on, but I think one example is enough, otherwise I run the risk of delving into disgusting bouts of self-pity, and who the hell wants to read that? Hell, I wouldn't want to write it, so I'm not even going to go into any sort of self-examination about whether I invite this upon myself, whether I'm cursed by the Universe, or any other, though possibly psychologically thrilling, reason. Let's just call it like this: I'm very sensitive, so, knowing how I feel when I'm hurt, I try very hard to take into account other people's feelings, and I'm a little sick of dealing with people who don't take mine into consideration.

So what do I do about it? The obvious answer is grow a thicker skin. It's the worse sort of tripe that I can remember hearing from my mom all through my childhood, but, in retrospect, I think she was right. The trouble is, though, how does one do that? Nobody I know has ever actually had any sort of plan for doing so. So, do you then just change your behavior to reflect the world around you? Do you grow meaner? More caustic? Do you develop a rude and offensive tone? It'll all be a show, of course, because I fail to see how, if you can't make yourself less sensitive, you can make yourself less sensitive to other people's sensitivities? (Did that make a damn bit of sense?) Besides: who wants to go through life being that sort of person? If you do so, then you are no longer any better than they, and that is the worse sort of thing to have happen.

So just what the hell does one do? All advice kindly welcomed, because, just as with my last post, I don't have an answer for this one, only thoughts and ideas that I put out there for some very appreciated feedback. Because it seems like we, the nice, sensitive, ones, who care about the people around us, who always try to phrase requests, or even demands, nicely, who never prejudge, who don't intrude on other people's rights, are placed in a very awkward position, with three unworkable choices: (1) grow a thicker skin (Again, I ask: "How?"); (2) continue on with the status quo (In which case, what was the point of writing this blog?); and (3) become that kind of person that causes us the type of trouble that leads to blogs like this being written.

Alms

2010-03-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Where I grew up, you didn't see people on the streets. Yes, we had people who had financial problems and who needed help from the community, but people living on the streets? In 16 years, I never once saw it. (Could I have been looking in the wrong places? Or, worse yet, not bothering to look?)

Well, sadly, that's not the case in Leicester. The streets aren't packed with the homeless, but there are certain places in town that I pass through where people spend the nights in doorways or up against walls near cash point, just fifteen feet from the entrance to the all-night McDonald's.

I get so embarrassed when I see them. So often, I pass them while on my way to my favorite, over-priced sushi restaurant, or when I'm getting money out of the cash point for books, or going out with friends, or for a cab because it's too cold to walk. I give them change when I have some to give, and the profuseness of their thanks always makes me feel like a cad, as if at that moment, everything that I'm not satisfied with in my life is laid out for them to see. I know they would likely trade their problems for mine.

So, I guess this is the point where I use my blog as a tool of self-flagellation. Today, as I walked to that over-priced sushi restaurant for some lunch, I saw a young woman sitting in the passageway that connects St. Martin's Square to Guildhall Lane. Too embarrassed to walk past her as she asks for change, I ducked to the side, trying to find some other means of getting to Guildhall Lane. There was no way, and I felt like the worst kind of person as I walked past her as she petted her dog, thanking me for the 56 pents I gave her.

I was so sick about what I'd done, I stopped at a nearby cafe to grab a cup of coffee, a muffin, and (For the dog.) a scone. I went back to where the young woman sat, and gave her what I had just purchased, making her promise to give the scone to the dog. She seemed thankful, and told me she would probably give the muffin to the dog, too.

I know that, ultimately, I did a good, caring thing. I don't want anyone who might read this to come to my defense and tell me it's okay. I know I'm a good, caring person. I try to be a good friend, I genuinely care about people, even people I've never met, and I care for animals, too. (Sometimes more than people, actually.) But I just can't get over what I did. I tried avoiding her because she embarrassed me. Her homelessness embarrassed me.

I see so many people pass by the homeless people in this city, several of whom I've begun to recognize, if for no other reason than they seem to respect each other's territory, and you can usually see the same person in the same doorway. (Is that some sort of meager sense of ownership? Of having?) They/we, never make eye contact if we can help it, and I feel like I've done my good deed for the day if I do make eye contact, and, for good measure, throw in a smile. Whether or not I condescend to "give alms" seems geared on how I'm feeling that day, and some poor homeless person misses out on my spare change because I'm in a bad mood about something that, in the long run, likely isn't important anyway.

Why do we ignore these people? Are we taught and trained that these people don't fit in to our "model" society, and, thus, aren't really there? The longstanding American motto of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" doesn't work well when someone doesn't have shoes. The British "stiff upper lip" is much stiffer when covered by five pound lip gloss, instead of being dry and cracked from spending the night in the English winter.

Or are we subconsciously aware of, and terrified of, the possibility that we might end up there some day? I can't hold on to a dime if it's glued to my skin. I have been bailed out by family twice since moving abroad. Scarier still, I suffer from mental health issues, and I am frighteningly aware of how much more likely I am to end up on the same street corner. Can I claim inner fear and turmoil, thereby letting myself off the hook for what I did today? Or am I looking for a way out even as I brand myself with this blog entry? Am I seeking redemption by writing about this, for the world to see Kenneth's bad behavior?

I can't answer that. Short of hypnotherapy, I'm not sure I could. And there's no graceful, meaningful, "happy ending" way to end this blog. It is what it is. I'll try to come back with stories about play rehearsals, quests to find the lost grave site of Cardinal Wolsey, reviews of science fiction books I'm lucky enough to be able to buy for myself... with happy things that I'll want to write about, and that people will want to read.

SF Masterworks

2010-03-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

Not to be outdone by Julie Powell of "Julie & Julia," I decided to come up with my own blog theme, and try to ride someone else's coattails to fame. (It feels rather weird to start this on the heels of a post about clothes shopping, but, well, what am I to do? Delete my first post? I think not.)

I got it into my head some weeks ago to try and read every title in the SF Masterworks series. SF Masterworks is a series of the best (I don't know who rates them.) science fiction novels of, basically, the 20th century. (There are 19th century works by H.G. Wells, also.) There are 70 titles in the paperback series, and, on top of being a collection of some of the best work ever published in the genre, they have been released with some incredibly beautiful cover art. (I have been known to judge a book by its cover.)

So, Julie Powell cooked approximately (I'm not bothering to look it up.) 400-500 meals in one year. I'm going to read all 70 titles by the time I leave the UK, and provide short synopses of them here. So much for focusing on my MA or my Fulbright project! (I'm kidding!)

Hitherto, I've read three titles in the series. (I've read several more, actually, but I mean actual editions of this series.) They are "Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson and "A Maze of Death" and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," both by Philip K. Dick. (Interesting fact: he died the year I was born.)

"Tau Zero" is a novel about a group of space pioneers whose ship, damaged by an interstellar phenomenon, is unable to stop, gaining speed and moving ever closer to Tau Zero, or, the speed of light. As the cosmos age billions of years, a few, short, claustrophobic, nearly unlivable years pass for the crew of the Leonora Christine as they hope and pray that somehow, someday, their journey will finally end.

"A Maze of Death" and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" are harder to describe, and I lay that entirely on Philip K. Dick's doorstep. (I'm no mental slouch, and I have a great deal of experience writing book reviews.) Dick's literature falls into a nameless category of work that I call "Expositionless Sci-Fi." By which, I mean the author tries to ground themselves into a future with a world so new and altered, we the reader are often at a loss as to just what reality is in the novel. ("Star Trek," for instance, is in the future, but reality hasn't changed so much that we can't figure out what is going on.) Dick, and authors like him, don't explain anything to us: we have to figure it out on our own. I admit that that is possibly the most complimentary thing an author can do for his/her reader, but something is lost when the reader fails to understand whole sections of a novel. Add to that the fact that "A Maze of Death" ends with a prime example of deus ex machina, and I'm afraid you're not looking at one of the top 100 books on my reading list.

Alright. 3 down, 67 to go. Not all my posts will be about this. I do have essays to write, and I know that my readers might be my fans, (Thank you for reading.) but not necessarily science fiction fans. But I'm going to give this a go. Who knows? I might end up with a movie of my own.

(Set in a mental hospital, where I've been sent for thinking I'm from Pluto.)

A treatise on how trying on clothes is bad for the soul

2010-03-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one who needs a Prozac and a stout pint of ale to get through the process of trying on new clothes? I tried on two shirts and a pair of shoes today, and nearly shot myself on the walk home, and that's saying something since I don't have a gun! (That's my awful attempt at a joke; please, is a pity laugh too much to ask for?)

But all joking aside, there seems to be a vicious cycle when it comes to trying on new clothes. I always feel the desire to get new clothes when I'm feeling good about myself, my body image, and the image I present to those around me. I always go clothes shopping with the intent of reinventing myself with a new look. Yee-haw!, as we say down South. Then, I actually enter the store, and that's when everything starts going down hill.

First, if you manage to look at the price tags and not shudder and shake until you throw yourself into an epileptic fit, then you're already doing better than I am. I've always been the sort of person who looks at the price of a shirt or pair of jeans and thought, 'Do you know how many books I could buy with that?!?!'

Then comes the bit where I invariably try on a shirt that's too small. (I have broad shoulders but a short torso, so mediums are too long and smalls are too tight.) Well, suffice it to say, I've never been reed thin, and that's when the self-esteem really starts to plummet. So I try on the next size up, but by that time I've already gotten into the mindset where nothing I see in the mirror looks good on me. Usually, having tried on shirts that make me feel fat and unattractive, I leave the store committed to starting a diet immediately, so that in a month or two I can come in and buy that small shirt, which will show off in glorious detail my new body: pecs, delts, and slimmer waist. Of course, the reality is that this fantasy of a possible future is not enough to make me feel better after the trauma I've just experienced, so I either buy myself a book (Thus leaving less money to spend on the clothes.) or a cupcake and Coke. (There goes the whole diet thing.)

So, from here on out, I think I'll just wear my bedsheets, walking around like someone at a Halloween party who couldn't be half-assed enough to actually dress up. (Last, Halloween, I tore my shirt and put on fake blood so I could go as a zombie, so I don't have that much more room to talk.)

Well, that's my first blog entry. I don't know why I think anyone would really care about my clothes shopping experiences, but, well, hey, that's what's on my mind today. Hopefully writing about it will be cathartic, and I'll start to love myself again before the day is over, LOL. I promise for those of you willing to come back for a second entry, I'll have something a little more exciting to report, even if I have to make it up.

A Sense of Something Greater

To Infinity, and Beyond!

I Feel Old

Winter Moon by Dean Koontz

Why Harold Camping is Bad for Faith

The Choice Between Healthcare & War

US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning And WikiLeaks – OpEd

Free Bradley Manning

Debt & Cote d'Ivoire

Choice

An Awful Thing Happened at the Chevron Today

Justin Bieber

Defining Myself

More Problems with Academia

On the Horns of a Dilemma

The Queen's Speech

--not worth thinking of a title--

Take This Job and....

Skyline; My Thoughts

Writing

Politics and Other Nauseating Topics

"Then, When, Now"

Dear Mr. President

What Theater Has Meant, Means, and Will Mean

Believing in Happily Ever After, Part II

Believing in Happily Ever After

Why University is Failing Us

A General Malaise

Thanks Where Thanks Are Due

Salaam Alaikum

A Censorship Dilemma

See This Movie!

A Big Day for Gays. I guess....

A Movie for Schmucks

Ummm.... Just read the blog.

Homage to Malthus

My Fulbright Year, Part II: Emotions and Regrets

My Fulbright Year, Part 1: Academia

Spotlight on the Channel Islands (please)

World Cup

The Works of John Wyndham

How the Cancellation of 'Flash/Forward' is Proof the World is Ending

'Mission of Gravity,' by Hal Clement

The 'It' Moment

You Have (x amount) of Friends

Good Old Golden Age Sci-Fi

How Feudalism Replaced Feudalism

Venting; and the use of mass media to do so

Mean Girls (...and guys, teachers, children, classmates, et. al.)

Alms

SF Masterworks

A treatise on how trying on clothes is bad for the soul