Rational Action

Matthew Good has released two songs from his forthcoming album, White Light Rock & Roll Review. The songs, Alert Status Red and Put Out Your Lights, are available on his website. For those who don’t know, Matthew Good Band happens to be Canada’s highest-selling indie rock band. Some time maybe 2 years ago they broke up and Matthew Good went solo. He also became more political, swinging to the hard left against American foreign policy. You can find his daily rants on his blog.

Yesterday he linked to this new article by Kurt Vonnegut. In it Vonnegut rails against President Bush and Republicans, denouncing the current administration’s foreign and domestic policies. Now, Vonnegut is probably the only author about whom I have any extensive knowledge. During a project in HS I managed to read nearly every biographical and autobiographical piece written by or about the man.

I really, really want to love his new writing. So I clicked on the link in Matt Good’s blog with glee, expecting to be amazed…

I hate to say it. Ok I’m going to say it:

Vonnegut has been repeating himself for the last two decades. Maybe three.

I’ve seen his wit before. When I read his sarcastic jokes, they remind me of the sad-funny criticism that I’ve… already heard. He speaks about his son’s mental illness. His adopted children. His failure to abuse drugs beyond cigarettes. The heartlessness of small government. The wonders of liberalism.

The same things he always writes about.

Maybe the Vonnegut style of the past has morphed into the writing style of choice for the present. Maybe Vonnegut seems repetitive because so many people have absorbed his own originality. I love Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. I just can’t help but wonder if he ran out of new things to say.

Two happenings in Lit Hum class today. I will start with some lighter fare:

For whatever reason prof wanted to talk about female orgasms. The subject had some slight relation to a story out of Boccaccio but without a doubt it was unnecessary. So here is the story he told us:

Zeus and Hera were arguing over which was better, the male or female orgasm. They consulted Tiresias, and turned him into a woman so he could experience both. Well, he finds out that it’s better for the girls and that they can do it over and over again. So Tiresias went around telling people this fact, and out of anger Hera struck him blind. (Note: The actual story seems to differ a bit from what he told us)

He then attempted to relate this story back to the lesson, but to be honest it didn’t have much to do with it. I think he just wanted to tell us how much better he thought the female orgasm was.

That was the first happening. Here is the second:

Two kids walked into Lit Hum wearing all black, sat down, and explained that in protest of recent racism on Columbia’s campus that they would not be talking in class today. The first problem? The “racism” consists of:

• An anti-affirmative action bake sale. At the bake sale the participants offered lower prices to blacks and hispanics. I thought it was a funny way of proving a point — they were making an analogue to the university’s admissions policies. It wasn’t just a bunch of white kids doing it, either. Being against affirmative action and being racist are not once and the same. Let’s not forget, many of the supposed benefitters of affirmative action find it degrading. (I say this although I support affirmative action)
• A horrendously offensive comic in the fed. For those of you who don’t know, the fed is supposedly Columbia’s humor publication. Alas, it’s not very funny. I’m not sure anyone really reads it. Yes, the comic was racist. But yes, we expect this crap from the fed. It’s not like the comic was printed in a publication that had any legitimacy.

Racism still exists and I support any effort to point that out. But when you protest, you should be making a sacrifice. For some reason whenever protesting coincides with academics, it lets the protesters avoid their work for a bit. So as a result, by protesting racism in Lit Hum class, the two didn’t have to say a word. At least one of them hasn’t read the texts for ages — so he got off the hook for one class. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just made their announcement about the racism protest at the start of class, then gone on and let the teacher call on them.

Maybe the protest was a big sacrifice. Maybe they missed out on lots of fun stuff by taking part in it. But they told the teacher, effectively, “I shall remain silent for the rest of the class, so don’t call on me.” Is that really protesting, if protesting makes things easier for you? Sigh.

A long time ago people wanted to travel long distances quickly and easily. They were sick and tired of walking or using mules or whatever, so they invented this ingeneous device called the train. Trains were wonderful, and everyone loved them.

Then someone really really smart invented the automobile, and the airplane, and the monorail, and the space shuttle. And they were all better than the train.

So why do we still have trains?

As I said yesterday: “It’s easy to forget that Amtrak sucks. Before you get on, you might think, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to suck.’ But then you get on the train and realize, ‘Yeah, Amtrak sucks.’”

We took the Amtrak train from NY-Penn Station to Philadelphia. It cost $52, one way. Taking SEPTA (PA Regional Rail) and NJ Transit on the way back, we spent $17, $34 for the both of us.

Oh, I forgot. Amtrak didn’t have seats for us on the way to Philly, so we had to stand (or, god forbid, sit) in the aisles.

Problems with my argument: Although Amtrak was expensive, all expenses were paid by the Columbia Spectator. And if trains suck so much, how come this entry is about how SEPTA/NJ Transit is better than Amtrak? They’re all train services.

Maybe I’m just trying to say Amtrak is a disaster?

Make sure you check the timestamps:
(03:53:24) Jazzrock12: i didn’t want to pay for the bible for lit hum
(03:53:29) Jazzrock12: so i printed out genesis online
(03:53:39) Jazzrock12: i thought it was 24 pages
(03:53:43) Jazzrock12: i got to the end
(03:53:45) Jazzrock12: and it said:
(03:54:01) Jazzrock12: “due to copyright restrictions, only 500 verses are shown. 1024 verses have been omitted.”
(03:54:05) Jazzrock12: so i had only read 1/3 of the fucking reading.
(03:54:06) Jazzrock12: adsfksa;kjfdfdsa

I received an e-mail last night which prompted a lot of thought. I responded like so, more or less (e-mail edited to remove comments about specific people):

Subject: Re: Hello boys and girls

As Camus said, “Suicide is the most important philosophical question.” He did a great job explaining why it’s the incorrect choice, and surely this explanation won’t compare…

The first thing I’d rule out would be killing yourself. It’s logically a bad choice because there is no turning back from it. You can always continue to live and then, if for some reason it becomes necessary, kill yourself. But not the other way around. (I don’t find that logic to be very satisfying but it was the most clear cut reason I could find to dissuade someone from suicide on the short term.)

I saw a very basic disparity between the suicidal mindset and my own. In it, the capacity to choose is a burden and the direction one takes is extremely constrained by outside forces. There seems to be a dread of the future, and an a lack of awareness of one’s power to influence the future.

I suppose by acknowledging this suicidal mindset, I was able to figure out my reasons for wanting to remain alive. This is the best I can do for you, so here it goes:

At the very core I feel that I am in control of my life and what I do. In fact, the idea that this could not be true frightens the hell out of me. When I look at the past I see how my choices shaped my direction, and that doesn’t seem to be changing. Even the constraints placed upon me — by myself, my parents, society — were ideas that I chose to accept, making a sort of rational decision. (e.g. I could choose to disobey rules, although I would then have to deal with certain consequences)

This feeling of control allows me to value the passing of time. Knowing that I decide where I go, there is a reason for me to continue down the path: I can take enjoyment out of making decisions, and furthermore, I know that in the future I will be able to make more of these decisions. I want to continue living because living implies decisionmaking; I want to continue that decisionmaking out of my enjoyment of it.

I suppose that is just the traditional existential hogwash. Or maybe I butchered it. But here I’m going to go out a bit more, with an associated reason that I continue living. It seems that I am always very excited for the future. I tend to build up the possibility of something very desirable happening in the short term, and that keeps me interested in staying alive for that time. So hope keeps me alive, sometimes. Very, very anti-existential. But I do wonder what would happen if I became unhappy and stopped thinking that in the future, things would get better.

Living out of hope isn’t a lot of fun. I would prefer to be able to focus on the present — on the decisionmaking/choices. Hope doesn’t really work, because when you stop having something to hope for, then at the extreme, you can stop wanting to live (On a minor level, it just makes you upset when you realize you were hoping for something and missed out on enjoying the time as it passed) However, someone who believed in the power of decisionmaking wouldn’t feel that way — he’d have control over whether things got better or worse. I wish (or hope. oops. espero que…) that I could give up hope, but I’m just not there yet.

I think that’s all I have to say right now. As you all can see by the use of conditional words, I’m not quite sure how I feel about all this. But I’m trying. Criticism, comments appreciated. I hope this gave you some ideas. I’m grateful for everyone who listened to me and I’m always, always, always willing to reciprocate.

Adam

So I saw Brother’s Past at the Knit tonight. They played in the Tap Bar, which was a bit more spacious than usual. Then again I haven’t been to the Knit in months and maybe things have changed. In fact, I’ll tell you one thing that did change. Concert fucking photography.

Nowadays it seems like everyone has gotten the idea to take his or her digital camera to the show. I’ll tell you why this is a bad idea, just logically. Digital cameras aren’t particularly sensitive to light; in fact, the CCD is usually equivalent to about 100 or 50 speed film (serious daylight film… or flash film — but nobody uses flash cause that would piss off the musicians.) To compensate, the cameras bump up the gain, which basically translates that dark mess into something viewable, albeit with lots of noise and blah blah blah. Look carefully: there may be bright spots, but there are no shades of grey. Bleck.

Of course it also sucks to be one of a million photographers. I mean when you’re standing in the front row with someone on your right and another guy on your left taking the same picture that you are, you start to feel a bit… redundant? I hate being wedged between other photographers. I want to fly fucking solo.

The last problem, and probably the most severe one, was that the photographers were fucking drunk. Half of them, at least. I just don’t see how that helps you take good pictures! Sigh. (Rant cont’d: I hate drunk people at concerts. The ones who love the beat so much that they just have to stick their hand up, point at the guitarist, and sort of punch it into the air. You know what I’m talking about, and it sucks.)

Anyway, we’ll see how my pictures come out. I have 3 free days and one roll, so I should be scanning them in tomorrow or something. Cross fingers.

The thought process last night was something like this:

I’m going to set my alarm for 7:30. That way I’ll get up early, take a shower, and finish my poli sci essay.

Immediately after I turned off the alarm this morning, I thought:

I’m going to sit in my bed for a little bit and think about my poli sci essay.

For some reason I fell back asleep “thinking” about the poli sci essay. When I woke up it was 8:20. I set the alarm for 8:30, woke up then, and went to class sans shower. The poli sci essay still isn’t really done, and it’s due with another unstarted and equally long essay in 22 hours.

It’s 6pm, why am I wasting time writing this? BECAUSE MIDTERMS SUCK! (If you’re in high school reading this and think midterms might not suck, let me assure you, they do. You will not escape their suckiness.)

The best part about new Norton Antivirus 2003 is that when it ultimately decides NOT to install, the little progress bar ticks backwards, demonstrating with each little step your complete failure as a computer technician.