In a Sunburned Land

Hello faithful readers!

I am arrived in Miami, living in a condo near Florida International University where I am spending the next 6 weeks studying Haitian Creole.


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February 2019
Wow, i seemed so positive and upbeat at the outset here.

On my first night in Miami, i broke the bed.  I was sub-renting an apartment off West Flagler Street near 97th, and staying inamongst the stuff of a Chinese professor who'd left for the summer.  It was minimally furnished, and the bed was a cheaper-than-IKEA structure.  When i first lay down on the bed uncarefully, it cracked, but didn't break.  The rest of the summer i slept sorta spread-eagle hoping to balance the weight so it wouldn't fully collapse.

That summer i saw every movie in theatres.  I ate Papa John's pizza so often that the crew knew me by name.  I ate at Denny's, because they had free wifi.  I had Netflix DVDs delivered to me in Miami nearly every day - because i was on a 3-Disc plan and i was finishing one or more almost every day.  I took the bus (and waited for the bus in the heat, my god, the heat) and got a used bike cheap, which i eventually abandoned for broken next to a gas station. 

But i didn't know all of this when i started this post.  I spent a summer learning Haitian Creole - and learned it well.  To this day i can read and write and understand and speak Haitian.  On my return to Milwaukee, i was asked to return to Mahler, almost magically, and things began, slowly, to turn around.

This was an important summer in my life i think - i still think.  I wrote my dissertation in my head over the course of this summer.  It's every bit as good as it was when i first came across it in the ether.

On this date in history...

it seems I was feeling it might be all over.  maybe I was right.

...

The stress is on the "Pursuit" in Pursuit of Happiness...

Zombie Narratives as Cultural Reset Buttons


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May 2018
In the interest of publishing the stagnating drafts and have full release (in the non massaganistic sense) of the blog, i present two headlines... Perhaps they were both meant to be posts in and of themselves one day (they certainly have the resonance for it).

They're both ideas that i've worked out a bit, but not that i've written out fully in any way.  Happiness is not guaranteed in America in the same way that Life and Liberty are.  And Zombies help us think about the future and what we might do differently.

The Bird Contract

Odd Side-Note: This post was actually written (but evidently not published) in April 2010, but when I went to post it it changed to yesterday's date.  Not sure why this is as typically when I've done this, it posts on the date the post was originally written.  Just an FYI if blogger has changed something and there start appearing oddly timed posts... [Solution Solved!]

Yesterday as i was walking from my parking spot to campus, i watched two male cardinals having a mid-air fight. They were frolicking, swooping, diving - seemed to be having an all-round good spring time together (or at least as much fun as I assume any wild animals have on a given day in an urban environment).

Then, as I watched, the one cardinal (who I've come to think of as 'evil cardinal') chased the other (innocent cardinal) toward the road and he was summarily hit by the windshield of a Toyota Camry.  The erstwhile bird came to rest not 10 feet in front of me.  A few of you may recall that this is not even my first run in with a bird dying at my feet.  Needless to say i was taken aback and the rest of the day had a heavy quality to it, but nothing else really took place, but I am on notice.  One bird tragedy is nothing to get worked up about and a second may just be a coincidence, but were i to find myself present at a third bird massacre I would feel compelled to take action.

ri bondye

I'm reading Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and came across an interesting point. "Nowhere," he says, "is there an account or picture of Christ laughing" (97). This struck me as essentially true - nowhere in my recollections or 10 minutes of google-image searching is there a (canonic) picture of Jesus laughing, giggling, or even much of a smirk.

Of course 'Jesus is love', right, and I assume love is happiness, joy, happiness, laughter, 'good-ness in general', right?


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May 2018
In returning to this post so much later, I am immediately reminded of Buddy Christ (which i've added in hindsight - it occurs to me that many of my drafts that i finish retroactively remain colorless and uninteresting, because they almost never have pictures!).

I think this post was going to be a diatribe on religion, or an early public embracing of atheism or perhaps an early exploration of the relative joys of the Vodou pantheon and the disparate personalities you find in the loa as compared to the relative hemogeny of the holy trinity.

Although my personal belief system has only solidified more since starting this post, i am more and more often flummoxed by public atheists' open hostility to religion writ large.  I very much understand the social, historical, anthropological, cultural, psychological and even physical (not to mention psychical) reasons that people take part in religion.  The desire or push by non-believers to try to dissuade those who believe is in some ways reciprocity (anti-evangelical), but i don't see it as supporting the goal of atheism - which i generally think to be truth-seeking.

Part of joining (most religions) requires expressions (publicly or privately) of faith.  That being said, part of the joy of taking part in religious events, services, etc. is the very simple act of joining.  Years before i even started this post, i read Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent Dancing In The Streets, which traces the history of collective joy from medieval dance manias to modern rock shows or live sports events.  America especially, but modern western life in general, too, has gotten bad at being together (see Bowling Alone and even EPIC 2014 to understand this more fully).

Much of joining (only less than youth-ful indoctrination) is that the world as-is, is a pretty frakking depressing place to be.  Religion can help that.  I enjoy attending religious ceremonies mostly for the anthropological ambiance.  It's fascinating to see how people (your own people included) worship, and how far afield it feels from my life, but how lovely it is that it seems close to the lives of others.

did The Secret cause the Recession?

http://www.getrichslowly.org/2007/06/11/get-rich-quack-david-schirmer-of-the-secret/


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January 2018

The title of this post was one of my proudest moments writing this blog.  I remember when i came up with the premise, and it's the reason that i continue to punch keys on this little corner of inter-obsolescence. 

It's a tweet, before there was twitter.  (was there Twitter in 2010?  anyway, i didn't know about it if there was).  A forum to posit incomplete thoughts and premises, and pass them off as modern wisdom. 

This thought was the underlying absurdity of American Capitalism and our (sadly not unique) taste for mumbo jumbo. 

The Secret was a dumb book that was massively popular for a time, particularly when i was a Barnes & Noble bookseller.  The premise was essentially that if you believed in the Secret, you could use its powers to magically make whatever you want to have happen happen.  This is called manifesting.  It's dumb, but kinda fun to think about.

The Secret at its core is a concept about selfishness.  We like to pretend (in magic, but also in capitalism) that we can win, but that there is no one losing on the other end of our win.  Capitalism (again, like magic!), is very good at making things invisible.  In particular the lines that connect things.  You win in capitalism when you find a cheap cool sweater (or a $1 hamburger), and it's easy to pretend that the worker who made that sweater or our entire ecological system aren't losing in that deal.

American capitalism - American oligarchs - are at their core about that same selfishness.  Oligarchs pretend they have magically manifested something that no one else could have, and they are therefore owed what they have taken.  In reality, the world is more McLuhanistic (or Benjaministic?), and most things that are would have been eventually anyway... probably, but in a new way.

—Right?

When did everybody start saying "—right?" as a response to everything?

Has anyone else noticed this? There came a time (i think) when everyone decided that "right" was the appropriate response to just about anything.

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but suddenly everyone can say "right" after anyone says anything... and it's not just saying "right" it's asking, sort of, "right.

Anyone else noticed this? I thought it'd started just with a couple I'd met (Val & Sean - seriously, where did you get this), but now suddenly i found everyone saying "right?" after most everything i'd said...

Is this new, or just new to me?