The Curse of Paradise

Ezekiel's Vision by Raphael

People are interested in the Singularity.

WHY?


Well, let's be clear. They really aren't interested in the Vingean Singularity. Vernor Vinge, who provided the  modern definition and popularization of the technological acceleration event that results in an inability to predict more than twenty minutes into the future, more than anything set this up as a literary gauntlet, flung down to writers as a challenge. "All bets are off", said Vinge, "so place your bets". Much as a challenge to himself more than anything. This Singularity is, I think, not the Singularity people are interested in. Vinge's Singularity is a little scary, not at all a sure thing, perhaps even an extinction event for humanity. A Strangelovian version of the happy ending.

They are more interested in the Kurzweilian Singularity. This is the version where Ray Kurzweil pins his hopes on a trickle down version of intelligence, where humanity's boat is floated with the rising tide, where people are transcended. This is Extropianism. Transhumanism. The wildly optimistic vision that we all, or at least some fortunate few, get to become angels and demons, gods, titans, mythical creatures, perhaps even the Godhead itself.

Another variant of this is hoping the aliens come visit. With a qualifier, of course, benevolent aliens. Ready to share their superior wisdom and technology. The ending of war, disease, poverty, hunger, want. The standard Star Trek Socialist Fantasy.

It is, in short, a diaper fetish.

Infantilism. Regression. Lolling about in the crib. Fed pap. Entertained with shiny things. Coddled. Swaddled. Bathed. Buttocks wiped. Perhaps even little bellies massaged so the very effort of pooping is made... effortless.

That is the reward of Paradise, is it not? The end of toil. The release of all care. Finally to rest. In sun dappled repose. With endless leisure. Supine grace. A return to the golden eternity of infancy.

Ah, but in real life, we know what happens when that happens. We fucking wither, weaken, and die.

True, stress and strife kill us off just as fast. But leisure and bed rest beget disgusting soft bodies and bedsores. Not good for us. Both as individuals and collectively.

A La-zee-boy future is sure to wipe us out as a species. We need challenges. We need problems.

If you really want a Singularity future, you better be ready for a Sisyphean one. To modify Camus' conclusion:

"One must imagine Frankenstein happy..."

Drawring

Rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer

I tried drawing using the computer once, but it was kind of like drawing with a pencil in your butt. Awkward. And after a while, your knees give out.

I'm pretty much a 3-D guy now. Any studies I do, I do in clay or wax. For figures,  I'll use sticks and hot glue for the armature. Most times I'll just go with what is in my head directly. Lately, though, I've been thinking of taking pencil to paper again. Oh, I'll never be a Dürer, or or a DaVinci, or a Rembrandt, and my rationalization to compensate for that is that I am willing to sacrifice anatomical fidelity in exchange for drama (even when the characters are stiff and wooden). Regardless, I am interested again, and it boils down to correcting a student's drawing. She had been given the assignment of drawing her neighboring student and produced a portrait that basically looked like her subject, if, you know, her subject had had a cerebrovascular accident.
So I fixed it for her. And that got me started. Now I want to draw things again.

The Failure of Fantasy

Castle Of Sin by Frank Frazetta

I've always been a science fiction fan, not so much a fantasy fan. Oh, there are books I've read.

Ursula K. Leguin's Earthsea series. Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian series. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. (Of course, it was Frank Frazetta's book cover illustrations that ensorcelled me first and foremost).

L. Sprague De Camp. H.P. Lovecraft. Jack Vance. Roger Zelazny (never read the Amber series). Piers Anthony... Okay, so maybe I'm more of a fantasy fan than I realized.

I've not read the Harry Potter series, but I've seen the movies - and I'll get to this in a minute.

I feel that there is a distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Granted, a fantasy author can do pretty much as he or she pleases - so long as the story remains internally consistent. (Example: if the wizard hero cannot teleport across water to get off an island imprisonment in one part of the book, but then later pops across a raging river, I have to say, "Oh, come on!"). And, of course, there is Arthur C. Clarke's famous maxim that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Or my corollary, that a sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology).

I think the major distinction is that, although both can be shameless vehicles of escapism, SF at least tries to be socially relevant, in the sense of exploring social themes, either in terms of impact of technology, or alternate political systems, or interpersonal relations, or psychological impact/exploration of personality and identity.

Fantasy just seems to be, well, a jerk-off fantasy about medieval romanticism. I mean, take Harry Potter. Not a single gun to be found, as far as I know. No bombs. Oh, motorcycles. Motorcars. Knives. Swords, I think the occasional pole-ax. But not one gun. I mean. Voldemort? Take him out? Give me a sniper rifle and a well-hidden location. Bam! Problem solved. J.K. Rowling's first book, barely a paragraph in, and it's over. Rest of series, unnecessary.

Alright, I kind of shifted sideways on that, but really, what's the point of the story? The standard villain who upsets the status quo and the hero who defeats the villain and returns everything to normal. Your standard Republican/ Teabagger daisychain.  So, you want my distinction? SF is for liberals. Fantasy is for conservatives.

And in fact, what is the whole purpose of magic anyway? It certainly isn't there to improve conditions. No magic potions to cure smallpox, or AIDS. No spells to prevent a Darfur or a Bosnia. No anti-Katrina curses. Just stuff for personal enrichment and gain. And all set in a castles and dragons and horses atmosphere.

Here you have a literary device pretty much primed to explore some really far out human conditions, and instead it is wasted, again and again on a Middle Ages beatoff fest. Or rather, to keep us mired in what could be considered simpler and better times. Pre-long-19th-century times. Before the dreary ugliness of Modernism reared its head.

Is that what it's about? We (mistakenly) long for a better time? A time when it was hard not to keep keep from dying before the age of 30? A time when you could tell a person was a king because "he isn't covered in shit"? That's pretty sad for a genre.

The Thirty-One Years On Game with Time. Time 1: Johnny 0

Me, then and now

My student aide, Vicki, informed me that I had to grow a beard this winter. I said... fine. I haven't grown a beard  for about ten years. For a different reference, the last time I grew one, it was blonde.

I informed Vicki of this, and she noted this datum with a certain skepticism.

So, I went home and rummaged through the pictures, and found one of me at the tender age of 22. Yeah, that's me in the top photo.  I showed this to the children at the college, and they all had a good laugh at the hippie. I had to remind them that hippies, real hippies, existed ten years before my own youthful indiscretions, and were, in fact, their fat old grammas and grandpas now.

I'm not fat.

My vanity feels it necessary to point out the older version of me is not fat.

That's all muscle and sinew. Okay, maybe some fat too. Alright, I'm fat - compared to that skinny little guy. But I could take him. Probably.

Phew!

Almost ten years ago, my younger brother lost his job at Motorola. He was in quality control, as an electrical tester, or something. Motorola, like every other consortium or collective superorganism, does not particularly care about its component parts, so long as it does not impact its own objectives of growth, profitability and pain avoidance (lawsuits, bad press, drop in share price, etc).

(Indeed, my old joke about when corporations changed the name of the Personnel Department to Human Resources was: "Why did they change the name? Its easier to justify exploiting a Resource". Ha ha ha.)

So, Motorola, like so many other corporations, took it's jobs to China.

The economy sucking the way it did, thanks to St. Ronnie and the Neoliberal's efforts to make the World Safe For Business, most corporations had no choice. Maggie Thatcher once said "Socialism works until it runs out of money". Others counter that "Capitalism works until it runs out of cheap labor".

(And am I starting to sound like a Marxist? Not quite yet, but give me time. By the time I reach my dotage, I plan on becoming radically insufferable, and it will be "proletarian" this and "imperialist running dog" that).

At any rate, my brother and his family suffered through a long period of unemployment due partly to the fact that he was in severe denial. He was trying to get his job back - not at Motorola, but a similar job, with the same pay scale and benefits. I, on more than one occasion, tried to persuade him that, Dude, those jobs are gone. Gone for good. Fled overseas. Never to return.

Finally, finally, after a nightmarish time, he landed a job. Not nearly as well paying. Requiring a much lower skill set. But it was a job.

So it is, that, as a result of my brother's ordeal, I'm a bit gun-shy in reading his communications. Quite frankly, I always have a sense of dread before I open an email from him.

So, guess what? His company went under right before Thanksgiving. Happy Holidays!

(The bank which held the loan for the company, and was more than happy to take money from the government on the promise that they would make loans out to struggling businesses, promptly turned around and reneged on it. There's one superorganism I'd like to see violated up the backside, with some type of collective equivalent of a toxic anal probe).

Needless to say, I've had a small case of anxiety going on since the announcement. I was able to help them out financially the last go around, but this time I'm struggling as well (and yes, brilliant fucking career move, Johnny, going into the art world). It's like there is a lit doorway opening onto a small, cramped, uncomfortable and not particularly well kept room in my limbic system. Didn't really need the added worry of how my brother's family is going to weather the current economic storm.

Well, good news, and better than a lot of people. He got himself a new job. A job with a company that took over the distributorship from his old company. Got the job mainly on the praise from the contractor population that my brother shares this little industry he is in.

Typing this right now, I'm experiencing a strange a build up of moisture on the eyes.  I guess I didn't realize how much this affected me until just now. It is a weight I didn't know was upon me, until I received the good news about his hiring. I'm not ashamed to say I've a hard time keeping the sting of tears out of the corners of my eyes in relief.

So, here's wishing well to anyone out there that is going through tough times. I'm hoping my our good luck is contagious.

"Kick their asses and report back to me"

Lewis Chess piece from the National Museums Scotland

That's, um, that's a phrase I've heard more than once in my life. Unfortunately, much to my dislike, and given our hierarchical collective command structure of a society, it has been rephrased to "Kiss their asses, and ...".

As I get older, as my prefrontal lobes stew and season in my own juices, I like to think that I'm developing a certain maturity that allows for just the right amount of introspection. And one of those moments of clarity is the realization that I am (or can be) remorselessly, psychotically, ruthlessly without conscience - under certain circumstances. And, if I am to be honest with myself, and no doubt a symptom of my own unique insanity, I'm a little proud of this.

(Now, some will say that questioning your sanity is a sure sign that you are sane. And to that I say, fucking bullshit).

I am, under the right conditions, a dangerously psychotic sociopath. I have, on more than one occasion, experienced a Berserker Moment. And I've got to tell you the memory of such unfettered rage, of quite literally Seeing Red, is one of pure and utter pleasure, perhaps something like what a cute little kitty cat or puppy dog feels when it takes down its prey.

Now, just the right amount of introspection, coupled with some interesting library tidbits about Northern European, or rather Northern Barbarian, history and folkways, makes me suspect that this is just a tad bit more genetic than cultural. And since this makes me uncomfortable, its a theme worth exploring, which I probably won't do.

I bring this all up because my attention was drawn to a rather alien and opposite piece of behavior, a compelling anecdote about our President to be found in Mr. Chauncey Devega's blog, We Are Respectable Negroes . Mister Devega's anecdote is as follows:

Several years ago a fellow traveler and colleague of mine studied under then Professor Obama. In the latter's constitutional law class there was a very outspoken, provocative, and often wrong student that was quite disruptive as he seemed to revel in contradicting a young professor, one who was coincidentally not White. Throughout the term, Professor Obama would handle him politely and delicately, in the best professorial sense finding merit in said student's comments and redirecting the course appropriately.

One day the seminar was discussing Reconstruction, the Emancipation of Black Americans, and the Equal Protection Clause. The arch-Conservative student in question suggested that African-Americans were not prepared for freedom, had not demonstrated a propensity for democracy, and would have been better off in a state of servitude until they could appreciate the fruits of liberty as taught by White people. Shocked, with students on the edge of their seats, Obama smiled, did not respond, and then once more salvaged this intentionally provocative, racially tinged, and disruptive set of assertions. Many students were stunned. The line of reasoning offered by our provocateur was both intellectually lazy and unfounded by the historical record. Obama could have destroyed this observation and the specious reasoning underlying it with little effort...what could and should have been a truly teachable moment. Instead, then Professor Obama chose to make lemonade by adding bar sugar to a noxious mix of rotten lemons.

In that moment President Obama signaled to a type of too good-natured naivete, and a belief in the generosity and reasonableness of people, that is to this day vexing his presidency.

 I am, quite frankly, continually blown away by this behavior. Not that this behavior is alien to me. Nor do I view it as a form of laziness or cowardice. Upon more than occasion, I've recognized that this type of particular battle is not worth the effort. That the asshole in question in the above anecdote (and yes, clearly, the student vexing Obama is an insufferable asshole, and, it should be noted, not likely to be President of the United States of America, proving, in some sense, that the best form of revenge is living well).

There have been more than a few moments, both on treading the debate boards of the interwebs, and in real life, when you realize that It Just Ain't Worth It. Nevertheless, there are other times when you just have to say, fuck it, savage the little weenie, destroy the chickenshit, and let him hate you for the rest of his hopefully short, squalid and miserable life. And then the inner Viking leaps with joy, and asks the flavor of the violence, short duration or long? Fast or slow? A quick rabbit punch to the pharynx? Or how about the Blood Eagle (a quaint Norwegian custom )? And if Obama had had a certain Rahm Emanuel as his teaching assistant, is there any doubt that the student would probably have suffered some type of deserved painful physical humiliation?

I do not view this reaction with pride. I only note it as instinctive to a degree. As a basic drive, a compelling animal magnetism which the Will has the only option of vetoing. It is no choice, any more than an act of heroism or altruism, as it has been noted by heroes in times of emergency, a choice. It's just the thing to do.

Showing restraint is a superior quality of a superior man. But, in this tawdry world, such men need men of baser metal to look after them. I, contrary to almost everyone, have more respect and admiration for Obama than before. And given the circumstances of the past two years, feel that he deserves more than a few chances. He really had no choice with the current tax deal, with the cowardly criminal hostage takers, Mitch the Bitch McConnell the Freak Half-Turtle Man, and John Boehner: Alien Escapee from the Carrot People Planet, but to put down his gun and talk to them, just like in the cop shows.

For the longest time, I viewed him with a slightly jaundiced eye. I certainly did not vote for him. Rather, I voted against McNasty and the Dingbat, who I viewed then (still do, even more now) as utterly and irrevocably disastrous for our nation.

I believe I will now be more charitable.

The Chinese Eat Potatoes?

Chinese Potatoes!

I recently read that China is the number one top grower of potatoes.

Potatoes? What?

Yes. It is the number one spud producing nation. Number two is Russia. Then India. Then the US of A.

And... China is not the number on exporter of potatoes. It is not even in the top ten.... which means the Chinese are eating those spuds?

What? Chinese eat potatoes? I've never heard of such a thing. I've never seen a dish in a Chinese restaurant that contains potatoes. I've never even heard of a recipe. So, to the Internet!

Google lets me know that there is a book: "How the Chinese Eat Potatoes". Well, there you go.

Braised Potato with Goose. Ooh, that sounds really good.
Cooked Potato Chips. Well, okay.
Flavored Mashed Potatoes. With minced green onions. I'm there.
Fried Lichen and Potato Chips. See, finally something that sounds like a Chinese recipe.
Fried Potato with Jellyfish Now we are talkin'.


Honestly, I, I'd never have thought. And China is pinning its food security on the humble potato. Apparently it can handle drought better than rice. Go figure.