Wheat from Chaff

My night last night: roughly 6 hours of Rise of Nations. Single Player. Tucked into my closet cum office space, the entire night I lead the English against the Romans then the Inca in an atemporal battle royale. I stopped to eat a little bean dip.
 
I realized something profound about myself somewhere betwixt bean dip and bedtime--the kind of thing only really profound to the realizor I think--I'm not gonna go anywhere, especially with video games around.
 
I do nothing all day at work except blog and bitch to my friends on Trillian about what a vacuous wormhole my life is. There I get really motivated to do something about my goddamned existence but, you know, my hands are kinda tied because I'm at work.
 
Then  work is over and I more or less break for my car, eager to become an active participant in  my life. By the time I've navigated the 520 parking lot (50 minutes for 15 miles yesterday) all I want to do is sit down and stare at something. TV would suit, but the fact that the syndicated powers-that-be have been showing nothing but old crappy episodes of the Simpsons the last two weeks quickens my retreat to the closet.
 
As for the commute itself, I used to use that time constructively. I dreamt up a story collection that took place entirely on the freeway. People daydreaming their way into car accidents and whatnot, questioning how the human paradigm could've gotten so off track as to be a species of commuters. This was before I had a decent computer. Now I just glare at the HOV lane, wondering how far I can get before a motorcycle cop comes roaring out of the swamplands and busts me--how close I can get to that first game of--whatever.
 
To be fair to this state's shit traffic system, upon arriving home, I'd still do nothing even if I had a chauffer and/or a rocket-propelled grenade to make my commute faster/easier.
 
I think the problem is that I'm a very Pavlovian creature by nature. Like most people who have brushes with priesthood, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov thought creatures were mere bundles of drooling reflex and carnal desire. I'm not sure if he extended this distinction to include humanity, but, in my case, he should have.
  
The only time I have ever taken my life in hand is after some cosmic nudging. I so lack drive that I have to be forced to action if action is to be taken at all. Conscious attempts at action without this force end ignominiously. I have a history of not doing a goddamned thing, yet being adored by every employer I've worked for. Stimulus, response. Every time I've made a preemptive attack on the wheels of fate, I get nowhere. Stimulus, response. The jobs I do get just fall into my lap. Stimulus, response. Primitive, instinctual Luke learns from this and continues down this path of evolutionarily stable behavior. So it's a chicken/egg type of dilemma, but regardless of whether it's a cause or an effect, I am completely unable to self-motivate.
 
Despite this knowledge, Luke the conscious agent remains naive, hopefull. "Holy cow there are lots'uh things I'd like to do. There's a big beautiful world to be explored!" Thankfully, Pavlov's Luke, the Luke of the cerebellum begins subconsciously working his magic. "Yeah, big and beautiful. Well you can't have it, move along, nothing to see."
 
Cerebellar Luke's got the right idea; Conscious Luke is iceskating uphill. This disappointment, this Carteresque malaise, is my stupid rationality thinking that transcending circumstances is something other than impossible. He thinks there might be a chance I could do something worthwhile if I'd just stop taking the path of least resistance. Like I said, naive. He looks at the results, has the wherewithall to trace them back to their causes, has the intelligence--for lack of a better word--to turn this into a more or less representative algorithm for Luke's life. He sees the narrative arc and still swings blindly against it. Unfortunately, Conscious Luke has control of emotions, and being constantly broken at the wheel of fortune makes feelings of sadness and failure happen.
 
So this bloated, self-deceptive humunculus sits astride the instinctual cortices and gets mad. He tells them what horrible fuck-ups they are, cursing his luck to have been bound to such vile creatures, such automatons. "You plod along; your dyadic reasoning lacks foresight," he screams. He continually explains their shortcomings on the off chance they will someday understand. His complaints are legion: They are guileless, lazy, they lack ambition, they fail to see the myriad choices that lay before them. 
 
They, of course, do their jobs well: processing stimuli, responding accordingly with hardwired, algorithmic precision. The problem is the new guy--the lumpy mass encased in bone, bobbing in its own juices atop the much older bundles of synapses. The new management. It doesn't know its place; it thinks it's better than it is, all powerful. It genuinely believes the random mutation that gave rise to it was somehow better than those that gave rise to the other hunks of flesh, each more or less suited to its own mindless task.
 
This has always been the pivotal question for me. If evolution is going to work as a worldview, how do we explain consciousness? This isn't the freewill question mind you, I think that's a tertiary issue to the big problem. Evolution is the study of chance and advantage. It's like dungeons and Dragons. Roll the dice, calculate your survival traits, your short comings, your saving throws, etc. With all the handwringing, the self-doubt, the self-loathing, the crippling indecision, the arrogance, how can consciousness be a survival advantage? The answer, I think, is that it's not--not anymore.
 
I read a book once: A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky.  It's the most interesting travel memoir I've ever read, but has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Another book of his, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, is about the nature of stress from a neurological standpoint. I didn't actually read that one. I read a review about it that seemed comprehensive enough that I could put off reading it--probably forever. Basically, stress is caused by adrenaline and certain other chemicals that flood your system when you sense danger. It's good shit; it has the effect of nitrous oxide to a riced-out Honda Civic, making you run faster, jump higher, think more clearly. This is great if you're more used to being hunted than being hunter. With our poor locomotion and soft hides, we need all the adrenaline we can get. One of our novel traits, according to Sapolski, is the ability to create the illusion of danger and thus, to a certain extent, create all the adrenaline we need. We can take previous stimuli--previous brushes with danger--and project that forward, sensing danger where it may be, rather than where it definitely is. That's consciousness, and it was apparently really good at keeping us from the jaws of tigers and whatnot and somehow helped us realize these fantastic cultural constructs. Kudos brain.  It is also, though, responsible for a myriad of stress-related ailments stemming from the constant stream of adrenaline we jumpy humans imagine into existence. Eventually, being too good at anticipating danger breaks us down physically. The point at which this becomes what we would call diagnosable paranoia isn't really important because, essentially, it's all paranoia to varying degrees.
 
All of which leads me to this conclusion. Now that we've effectively orchestrated an end-run around evolution--pulled out the weighted 12-sided die of civilization--all consciousness really does is break us down. It's harmful, disasterously harmful. We have ulcers, heart problems, crippling paranoia, insanity. We don’t have to worry about the jaws of animals anymore, only the brains of other humans. And it’s our own paranoid brains that are precisely the reason we have to fear our own kind. It’s us and the chimps--the only animals on earth who kill in cold blood. Do chimps get paranoid? That would be an interesting follow up, and might go towards an answer to whether unique ability in fact leads us down the equally unique and extreme path of preemptive slaughter.
 
Could it be that murder has something to do with a life lived in a state of constant fear? Michael Moore has made a career out of arguing there is. What would these guys say about it? What about the possible correlations with human expectation? Anticipating a narrative arc seems to be very similar to the act of constructing danger. Much like the adrenaline pumping mechanism, it is controlled by and subject to the interpretation of the big deflated grey Buddha-looking thing in our brainpans. So given the successes and failures that exist in my mind, the whiner makes judgements on where our life should be heading. It's this projection that has been bothering the hell out of me. The homunculus is tenacious in propping up his extrapolation, constantly nagging me to improve my position, to get my life where it "should" be. But at the same time cerebellar Luke continues to take the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance in this case, it seems, is placating conscious Luke. So at work I look for new jobs and contemplate my existence lackadaisically. Then once I'm free of the restraints of work, the easiest way for primordial Luke to get some rest is to shove conscious Luke in front of blinking lights and explosions.
 
The fact that I'm pretty good at videogames helps me feel like less of a failure. There is, though, a high turnover rate when you play games on easy difficulty.

Read the full thing here.

This is a huge relief

I just found out why the missionary position is called that. I'd wondered about it for years probably, but always been afraid to ask because I assumed it was some simple and widely known answer, or some culture-wide in joke I'd missed out on. I was probably wrong, unless most people are jokester Anthropologists:
 

"In those days, face-to- face copulation was considered uniquely human, a cultural innovation that needed to be taught to preliterate people (hence the term 'missionary position')." -- Bonobo Sex and Society

That site is of much greater value than just answering questions of sexual slang by the way.


And on another note--one equally as revellatory--my boss told me he's doomed to spend his retirement in Florida, as all New York Jews, including 5 generations of his family members, are required to. It's nice to know that, for at least a select few Israelites, the diaspora has ended. It's kind of depressing, though, that God's chosen people should end up outside Ft. Lauderdale.

Read the full thing here.

Boy that sure is bad

With this revived interest in a journalism career and at the behest of a friend disguised as an anonymous commenter, I've been digging through my old Gonzaga pieces. Good GOD are the older ones wordy--yes much wordier than this blog. The more recent ones aren't as bad. Seems to be that the section I wrote for switched to an Onion format half way through the year so I had to emulate journalistic prose rather than just spouting poppycock--which is fine in private, but has no place in our society.
 
So I'm still on the fence about posting my articles here . . .
 
Oh but I have been writing a sociological treatise on why I'm such a horrible failure and why I'll never amount to anything.
 
Stay tuned.
  
 

Read the full thing here.

Feelings I don't like: Ennui

I've been sitting here for three hours spinning a pen cap trying to figure out how to break into journalism.

And by break into I mean write something that will somehow be published by someone.

I really don't know where to begin, and I don't think AIBO will be any help sniffing out a solution to this problem.

I'm crippled by what I consider my lack of a portfolio. The anemic bundle of bleached tree fibers amounts to two real articles, two real editorials and about 15 satirial Onion-esqe articles and assorted commentary from my days as a newsie at the Gonzaga Bulletin. Oh yeah, all the real articles were for the Cheney Free Press--dunno if that'll work for or against me.

My big idea was to start small, stick with my roots. Living in Seattle I have access to shitloads more concerts than my fellow Americans in Spokane. Any act that rolls through Spokane more or less has time on their hands between the Emerald City and Boise or Missoula. SO, I write an article PREVIEWING concerts coming to Spokane based on watching a given band in Seattle. The best chance of landing this gig, I think, is through an independent spokane area rag (see: The Inlander, The Local Planet). Newspaper concert reviews are fundamentally flawed because they always appear after the fact. "Best concert ever huh? Tight, I'll have to catch them when they roll through again in 5 or 10 years."

My system, obviously, would fix that. I've already pitched this idea to some chick at the Inlander whom a friend (also working at the inlander) put me in touch with. The email went unreplied to. That was months ago, back when I kinda liked my job and wasn't actively think of ways to leave it and be self-sufficient. Things, like people, change. It's not me, it's you.

So I'm going after the idea again, but this time I want ammunition above and beyond what I've done in the past. I'm going to write an article unasked-for, dazzle them, and I'm in. Unfortunately the only band coming to Spokane in the near future that isn't Loverboy or this guy is Pedro the Lion. Fortunately, I really like Pedro the Lion and I'd jump at the chance to go to their concert anyway. Win win. One snag: the closest they get to Seattle before hitting Spokane is Vancouver, the night before. The plan isn't nearly as well thought out as I'd hoped.

Back to the drawing board . . . If there is an easier or better way, someone let me know.

Update: Looks like David Byrne is coming to town. I'm seeing him in Seattle a night later but I saw him in Spokane at the Fox a few years ago and talked to him a little so maybe that'll work. . .

Read the full thing here.

OMGUSUK

Why do people need personalized license plates? What exactly is the point? I don't understand it, but I'd really like to. Unfortunately, the kind of people that have such plates seem far too ostentatious for my fragile disposition. I get sweaty around such people, I worry they'll start to pinch my cheeks or rib me with their elbows--back me into a corner and explain to me the versatility and universality of tweed. So, forcibly alone on this voyage of discovery, I speculate wildly.

Do they have difficulty meeting people? Do they think their love of Saabs will spark a roadside conversation? A life-long friendship?

"Excuse me, but I couldn't help noticing you think 'SOBSROK'. Do you mean the European car manufacturer or the spasmodic contraction of the throat? I, for one, enjoy both."

Is the drive to let complete strangers in on their inner most desires so strong that they have to coalesce their reason for drawing breath into a 7 digit alpha-numeric code? Were they not held as children?

Is there not one amongst the millions of bumper stickers that adequately demonstrates their status as a "18FCALI"? Or do they simply relish the fact that they are able to waste literally thousands of minutes of people's lives daily as a freeway full of motorists collectively wonder, "what . . . the . . . fuck?"

All of this is bad enough. It seems to me, though, that in addition to wasting my time, most of these plates are outright lies or, in the best case, percolating self-deceptions.

SK8RGRL	Just really likes Volcom and either loves or despises Avril Lavigne
1337HXR	Rewarded himself with that for getting his Mandrake-based Counter Strike server up and running.
PRNSTAR	Isn't, but desperately wants you to think he is.

The impetus for this drivel began on the way to work: I was stuck behind an Audi TT. The shiny black roadster, looking like someone had tugged at a VW Beetle with a taffy-puller, was driven by a beehive of thinning silver hair that may or may not have been mounted to the skull of some osteoporotic septuagenarian. The license plate read MJS4FUN.

Besides driving fast, which these cars do pretty well, the only fun I can imagine gleaning from an Audi TT is laughing as more than one friend tries to pile in the car with you. The fun-factor necessarily diminishes if one of these friends is a dwarf or an amputee. The car was a hardtop because, frankly, it looked as though any whipping wind would cleave with grim finality what remained of her hair from their enfeebled folicles.

So it had to be the rule-bending exhileration of speed. This ball of fluff though, alone in her car, windows fully up, was watching her speed strictly--watching it sit perfectly 10mph below the 25mph limit.

"YOU'RE NOT HAVING FUN!" I screamed, fists shaking. The scream was imagined of course, but imagined with the incredulity of a young Tom Hanks managing a team of unruly housewives ("There's no crying in baseball"). My hands were steadfast at 10 and 2. As sweat formed a puddle betwixt my brows, my left eye began twitching uncontrollably.

I vented this annoyance to a friend (ref: 1, 2), and he notified me that his father, in fact, had a personalized license plate. He then cautioned me to not "paint all users with the same brush", which is good advice. Further, he said that he feels initials (his father's simple, austere choice) leant an elegance to the affair of owning a motor car.

So all of a sudden I look like the crazy one.

Strange how initialling your car is a sign of cultivation, while initialling a carton of milk with a permanent marker conveys anal retentiveness and paranoia.

Read the full thing here.

Another Title Change

This effects very few because no one really reads this exercise in self-centrism: I've changed the title again to further underscore the purpose of this blog because some of you just aren't getting it.

I write things that are meaningful and important to me; you ignore the deeper semantic meaning and go straight for the syntax errors. With each one you find, I get a little closer to crying. It's like an easter egg hunt that destroys my self-esteem.

And since the spell-check button on my pages doesn't work at all, it would appear that this is an officially sanctioned event of blogger.com.

Read the full thing here.

A River Sucks Through It

"You're no Brad Pitt."

I've heard that my whole life. No matter what I'm doing, I seem to get compared, unfavorably, to Brad Pit. I just couldn't quite pull off Jeffery Goines in my Intro to Drama production of Twelve Monkeys. "Close Luke, but you're no Brad Pitt." Double-faulting a third set tie-break to lose in the second round of the district tournament. "Good try Luke, but Pitt would've nailed that serve."

"99th percentile on those SATs? Not bad, but not Brad."

I've been a failure my whole life, but before Thelma and Louise, people just didn't quite have the resources to effectively tell me how I had failed to stack up.

"You're no Billy Crystal," was common, but didn't really affect me, because even as a child I knew that I was at least as good as Billy Crystal at most things. Not being completely unemployable outside the awards show circuit for one.

Lacking a concrete human persona, critics were forced to mine the ether of that most beguiling of linguistic constructs, the adjective. 'Twas gallantry I lacked, or chutzpah, verve, that certain something, je ne sais quoi, whatever. It was always something, they were always adjectives, and they were always in the negative. "Ya ain't got it kid," my uncle would say, affecting the tone of a prohibition-era dock worker, despite having never left the Inland Empire. None of this was very convincing to an eight year old because the criticism was never tangible enough. I still don't know what chutzpah means.

As mentioned, Thelma and Louise changed this. It put a heaving, virile face to my secret shame and began my decent into the annals of the also ran. By the time Cool World hit, I knew I'd be playing second fiddle for the rest of my life. He has a string of hit movies, undeniable talent and a hot wife. All of this despite being a transvestite.

Lately though, I'd been mounting a comeback, and the change was more in perspective than tangible success. Essentially, I stopped judging myself vs. the Brad of the present. Luke 2004 just can't stack up to this year's model Pitt. So I started comparing us at points in our lives, i.e. Pitt at 23 vs myself at the same age. I was comporting myself rather favorably. I've graduated college (Baumgarten, 15 : Pitt, Love). I've never yet had to chauffer strippers (30, Love) or dress as the giant chicken "El Pollo Loco" (40, Love) to sustain myself. I've never lived in Oklahoma or Missouri (game Baumgarten).

This weekend though, a long, sour note from the non-first violin of failure burst my eardrum of pride; shattered my champagne flute of hope.

We were hiking in the Cascades, though not very high up. This was a lazing about, communing with mother nature and slaughtering some of her creatures kind of weekend. My pre-pubescent brush with hunting exorcized whatever desire I may have had to kill a fellow mammal, so I had to find some other phylum upon which to unleash my preternatural blood lust. Unfortunatelly, furry things are pretty pervasive, and snakes can fight back, so my only recourse was to guilelessly dangle a line and hook in the water with the hope of snagging one of the slimy bastard rejects from kingdom Animalia: the fish. But the plan had a kink. The only rod I had access to was specifically designed for fly fishing. Initially I saw no problem with this, I'd seen A River Runs Through It, starring my arch-nemesis; I'd read the book. I'd been fly fishing as a child, caught a fish that would have fit in here. Further, so my reasoning went, fishing isn't even a real sport, it's nature's equivalent of a doctor's office visit: little action, a lot of waiting. And I can sit circles around anyone.

Norman Maclean wrote that as a child, he thought Jesus must have been a fly fisherman, and John, the most beloved among the apostles, would have been a dry fly fisherman. After crunching the numbers on this weekend's fish haul, I place myself right under Judas Iscariot, who occupies his own ring of hell, holding the can of nightcrawlers for the lesser apostles (see: St. Thomas, St. Matthias et al.) and their conventional fishing rods. I have a long way to go before I'm even allowed to look at a traditional set of bait and tackle, even longer until I get to dangle a bloated worm and stare intently at a giant red and white bobber.

Forget for a moment that I failed to catch a fish, or that it took me upwards of an hour to get my various lines tied. Forget that I snagged the pole on every bush and low-hanging branch on the way to the inlet of Peete Lake. Forget that I had no waders, and seeing no pools of slow moving water close to shore, I decided to wear flipflops and shorts to trudge through thorn bushes and brambles on my way down to the river--in the hopes of getting deep enough to find some fish. Forget that the poor traction of my flip flops, together with my crippling lack of coordination gave me a pumping arterial hemorrhage and left me face down in what I can only describe as a den of asps. Forget the shrieks of pain piercing the mid-afternoon calm as they ricocheted of the peaks of the northern Cascades.

Forget all that and I made a pretty good show of fly fishing.

Luckily Peete Lake is very close to Roslyn, Washington, home of Northern Exposure and the worst web page ever. There I was able to enjoy a tasty burger and get some perspective. I may never be as good as Brad Pitt at anything, but, without even trying, I'm better off than pretty much any of these poor bastards. The guy from My Big Fat Greek Wedding excluded.

Read the full thing here.