This Post is Very Meta...

A couple of years ago I was taking a real look at my social media self.  Bringing back this tag to Roman Numeral J reminds me of my recent Facebook post about same date nostalgia. 

When I was a kid I had a page-a-day sports calendar.  For that reason I know that Jay Hilgenberg shares my birthday, March 21st.  The date on which things happen is important to us (anniversaries, birthdays, deathdays) and being able to mark just how long ago a specific thing occurred helps comprehend the passage of time.  This understanding, I think, can help calibrate our intentions - that is, understanding that you are now, say, 37, and that you were 28 - or maybe 19 - and had many of the same ideas, aspirations, or hopesdreams, and that there may be specific actions that need to be taken.

The link between memorial and memory is something I've written about (sorry, no link at present - not sure where that is).  Facebook's new On This Day feature is symptomatic of our desire to memorialize our lives.  However, Facebook's new version is imperfect.  Today, we post instantly from our iPhones, and properly memorialize, but many of the earlier year Facebook memories I see in my feed are on the wrong day... I didn't post my vacation photos until I actually got back from vacation (because I used to use a camera to take pictures).

I don't mean to sound like an old coot.  But I think the medium of social media is not built for memorialization, but they try...

I'll think this through, and remember it fondly.  I think I'll tweet out a link to the post to try to keep the conversation going...

Of the Beginning...

Well, this is surprising: Mes. Ahmed Farag Ali and Saury Das have mathematically done away with the necessity for the Big Bang. 

Source: www.fromquarktoquasars.com

My understanding is, of course, inexpert, but wildly interested.  (I do have my own working theory of the universe that I formulated in the Fall of 1999, as I was taking my Intro to Astronomy class at Luther College.  That theory remains as yet, un-disproven!).

The essential problem of modern physics has been that we had a theory called gravity (just wait until Creationists and Climate Change Deniers learn that gravity is a theory!), which works fairly well in most day-to-day situations. 

As we start to think about big things (galaxies and stars in various points in their life cycles and stuff like that), gravity stops being true a lot of the time (one example of this is explained by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity).  Also, when you start to look at very small things (sub-atomic particles like quarks, Higgs-Boson particles, protons, etc.) gravity also stops being true (which we call Quantum Mechanics).  The problem we run into is that gravity turns out to be false in very different ways with regard to the big and small stuff.

One way that we accounted for these big/little discrepancies was to theorize a singularity at the beginning of time - the Big Bang (not to be confuse with the Bing Bag, a magical vessel that emits anything from crooning melodies to doddering background vocals in a David Bowie Christmas carol when you reach into it).  I'm not quite sure as to why we thought the Big Bang was mathematically necessary (would appreciate some guidance in this area, and am trying to read up on it to better understand).

But now, we have a mathematically plausible universe that doesn't start in some spectacular explosion, before which we could have no understanding or make any predictions.  Instead, it may now be the case that the universe has simply always been. 

I'm not entirely sure yet how this new revelation, if in fact true, changes my sense of the everything.  At the very least, it would expand on the fictional Mark Twain's sentiment from the ST:TNG speech, where he bemoans a universe with only human existence on earth, a "waste of space" - if this finding holds true (at least for the time being), it seems our unique human existence would also now be a waste of time as well.

Double Feature Challenge!

I'd like to issue the first ever Roman Numeral J Double Feature Challenge. 

The concept occurred to me yesterday evening as I was waiting for the bus, checking my long-lost Facebook news feed.  Jeff had posted a link to a movie imagining of moving through our solar system at light speed called "Riding Light" (by way of Huff Po).

I watched the first 10 minutes or so, loving it (though perhaps not the soundtrack), but it reminded me of something. 

Of course (once you've watched a bit of "Riding Light"), I was thinking of Michael Snow's 1967 Wavelength, which would make an excellent companion piece.  I'm not sure of the preferred order, and would accept suggestions and also highly recommend trying a side-by-side comparison.

 

SFSE

In The Chronicles of Amber, characters eat, drink, sleep, and sex more narratively thank is typical in other epic fantasies I know (perhaps the Gunslinger is an exception to this this).

Gets me thinking about our own SFSE project - I think the intro, and part of the goal will be to outline be challenge in coupling (and ultimately procreating), where your natural inclinations (I'm hungry now, tired now, etc.) get alters and affected by the needs of others. 

We label this civilization, and my writing this would cause my partner to lambast the "selfish male tendencies in me".  I think, thought, that this is just another, subtler manifestation of Social Taylorism, and why hetero-normative coupling is good for capitalism and systems of control. 

The fantasy novel that depicts a hero wandering (alone or together), and eating when he/she is hungry, sleeping, etc. is a challeng e to this (but an escapist one)


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February 2020
So, firstly, it seems clear that I was drunk while writing this...  But it still seems to make good sense to me, and I like it.

Shitting, Fucking, Sleeping, Eating (SFSE) is a book project i have proposed over the course of the past decade (several years still before this post).  I haven't worked on it enough, and felt it was a project that should be co-written by a large team.  It's a book about intimate living (in fact, i thought the title might be SFSE: A Guide to Intimate Living).  An advice book that ideally the wacky aunt would give to newlyweds, i imagined a PR blitz - moral outrage, anger at swears and a complication of what we think of as a "standard" life.

Unfortunately, our current era has become too profane, too crass, for this book to make a dent.  We are living in the obscenity not only of the Trump era, but the obscenity of massive wealth and middle class decimation.  But maybe - there is still something to be said for finding better and better ways to coexist, both in our individual homes and in the larger world...

On Reading and Re-reading

I am just shy of 100 pages from the end of The Chronicles of Amber, a ten-book epic fantasy series written by Roger Zelazny, primarily in the 1980s. It is with a mixture of anticipation and despair that I approach these final pages. The sad [contradistinction] of reading (of any consumption, really, but particularly the consumption of grand epics) is the joy of the ultimate unfolding mixed with the knowledge that you will soon be at an ending.

Endings are unpleasant things, even when they’re happy – because, of course, they represent the represent the only reliable stasis of the universe, change. Endings are manifestations of life writ literary – they are reminders of our own mortality. We all will end, and most of us are so terrified of the fact that we spend our lives distracting ourselves from the simple reality. Work, wealth, goals and ambition are just ways of organizing oneself away from [alabaster].

To come to the end of an epic is a unique misery, because you’re experiencing the pain from both sides, the finish of a massive creative act (e.g. writing Ulysses) and simultaneously the finish of a massive consumptive act (e.g. reading Remembrances of Things Past, or eating a meal at Old Country Buffet).

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It's been a year and a half about, since I put this together originally...  I like the direction of the thinking, so will add it to the record (jss - 8 May 2016) 

Elven Intellectualism

Re-watching The Desolation of Smaug and the elven torture scene got me thinking about Elven Intellectualism. 

The idea of alignment in D&D is fairly straightforward:

Source: http://throughThePrism.blogspot.com

• You are either good, evil, or neutral.
• That orientation, is determined by one of three worldviews: Law & Order (lawful); Good & Evil (chaotic); Libertarian (neutral)

The whole system is easily systematized and graphed (see right), and play follows general rules proscribed by the logic of this system.  Players generally play good (or perhaps neutral) characters, so wanton slaughter of innocents is reserved (again generally) for the monsters, and quests to save personages of historical significance, or more often to enrich PCs personally, are undertaken.

Others, and in particular Degolar, from whom I swiped this rendition of the chart, have put more thought into the concept and viability of alignment theory for socio-philosophic application.  Just search "Alignment Matrix D&D" on google image search, at the poster meme of applying alignment to fiction and real world environs is readily apparent.

I want to think instead about the historicity of alignment.  Namely, how good and evil (and law and chaos) might be affected by the passage of time. 

If you're a person who is capable of (or perhaps it's fairer to say 'in the habit of') thinking historically, or if you're an elf, who has lived through centuries and millennia, and passed time has warped notions of good and evil, law and chaos: what then might alignment mean to you individually, and socially?

Note: this is a work in progress, and will be continued (and perhaps even concluded!), but I wanted to get the thinking out their in its nascent form for consideration...

Vote Happy

Election Day will soon be upon us, once again.  Milwaukee has a Socialist running for Sheriff (she seems really lovely, smart, and on the right side of history!), and a Green Party candidate for State Treasurer (and in September, his numbers were pretty okay!).

In this sad/silly era of bought & sold candidates, dangerous zealots (as well as more clown-ish zealots), and a political campaign and lobbying system that encourages corruption, a progressive looking for genuine reform options often doesn't know which way to turn.  Of course, Democrats being in charge of things is less bad than Republicans.  So, the sensible choice seems to vote for Democrats in close races, and vote more radically (Greens, Socialists, liberal Independents) when it's expedient.  The fear-mongering lessons of Ralph Nader loom large, despite the fact that they're misguided.

Nationally, there are a lot of interesting races.  That said, the US House is guaranteed to remain in Republican hands, despite the fact that more people will probably end up voting for Democrats.  Thank you gerrymandering.

Unfortunately, the same reason can't be given for why the Senate seems poised to fall into Republican hands as well.  Though it would be awesome, wouldn't it?  To re-draw the state lines to re-organize people into more culturally appropriate regions? 

• East and West Dakota - East Dakota would be a 40 or so mile wide strip surrounding the I-29 corridor, stretching from Grand Forks all the way down to Kansas City (anything north of GF we can give to Canada).
• Up North - the northern part of Minnesota and Wisconsin, along with the UP.

  

  Source: www.pastemagazine.com

• The Middle Bit - a utopic plot of mostly rural farmland, focusing primarily on the biography of me, including Clinton, Wisconsin, stretching up north to Madison, then over to Decorah, Iowa, then up to Minneapolis.  It looks a bit like those Tetris pieces that go down one, over one, down one again (see picture, except the other one, and turned vertically).
• Austin, Texas - Austin, Texas.
• Yellowstone - Just a really cool state to visit.  First bear governor.
• Iraq - I know we're mostly moved out, but it's time to start colonizing, people.

The State of Wisconsin has a useful resource for figuring out what all is going to be on your ballot: 

At the top of the ballot, of course, is the Mary Burke / Scott Walker race for Governor.  This one will come down to turnout, and while I'm not overly excited about Mary Burke, she's the choice.

Down the ballot a ways is our rootin'-tootin' Sheriff Clarke, running against Angela Walker.  It seems the last time the Journal Sentinel deigned to mention her in an article was August 8th, when Chris Moews was being backed against the gun-loving sheriff by Michael Bloomberg.