Bits For Rent

It’s hard to believe it has been over 11 months since I last sat down and gave myself the time to place my thoughts into sentences. In fact, it is almost a year to the day since my second-to-last entry here. What fascinates me about this is that I cannot even count the number of times each week I will think of a subject and say to myself, “Hmm, this would be a great blog post.” Suffice it to say that it would be quite high. And yet, after 11 months, I have naught to show for it but these few short sentences expressing my regret at all the things I lacked the time to do.

Time is a fascinating thing. And thinking about it has caused me to want to make some pretty spectacular sweeping generalizations about people. The rest of this post will be rife with those, so literalists and fact-checkers may want to take their ball and go home before I start causing smoke to come out of your ears. Everyone else, enjoy the ride.

The Illusion of Control

As humans, it is in our very nature to attempt to control as many of the variables in the world as possible. For those that we cannot control, we build up such great amounts of data that we are able to predict, within one or two standard deviations, what the likely occurrence will be. In the world of technology, Moore’s Law tells us that the number of transistors that we can place in a computer chip will double every two years. This statement has held true for over 40 years. With weather, we lose accuracy the further out we predict, but 24 and 48 hour forecasts hold an incredibly high level of accuracy. (Thanks to the spread of 3G networks and WiFi, we are able to keep up with adjustments to a forecast on the fly, thereby lessening the likelihood of incorrect forecasts from negatively impacting our personal plans.)

My favorite example is the odds-makers in Vegas, though. The amount of times I have heard, or even said myself, how incredibly accurate the line is… well, let’s just say the amount of nickels could afford someone a free lunch, and possibly dinner. The beauty of Vegas’s system is similar to that of the New York Stock Exchange– the actual measure of the point spread (or stock value) is directly correlated with our own assumptions as a whole. There’s a fascinating book about this by James Suroweicki called The Wisdom of Crowds which I won’t go into at length, but the crux of the book is this: people, so long as they have some knowledge about the subject, will as a group deliver an estimate of that subject’s worth, outcome — whatever it is that is being measured — with almost startling accuracy.  When pressed into guesswork or speculation, be it for Fantasy Football or the outcome of an election, we do a damn good job of predicting the future.

Yet despite all of our cunning and data analysis, cross-referencing and fact-checking, gut feelings and soothsayings, we make for especially rotten self-analysts. We routinely stack our plates with more than we can handle, build up incredible backlogs of things that we “must” get done but that are not of a high enough priority to actually get done, and never fail to lament our perpetual lack of time (case in point: this post). A lot of things can be blamed for this, such as becoming bogged down in minutiae, spending too much time on things that are of no practical benefit, sleeping too much, or sacrificing personal time for the sake of socializing with others. None of which is really important, though. It’s nice to be able to assign the blame elsewhere and list reasons X,Y, and Z as to why we never finished that book or made it to the gym yesterday, but again that’s really just us being human and needing to categorize, number, and file away all of life’s particulars.  The point I suppose I set out to make is that we actually have very little control of our own lives, despite our firm belief otherwise. Holding your breath will not slow down time any more than a Shake Weight will get you into shape. Which is, I believe, largely why we do our best to ignore it.

To be more clear, what I think we ignore is more the long-term span of time, not the immediate and ongoing elements of time. Think about it like this: when people reach certain milestones in their life, such as a birthday or anniversary, we typically celebrate those moments retrospectively. New Year’s Day is probably the biggest exception, due to resolutions and the optimism and hope that a new year brings, but even birthdays tend to be focuses around what has been, not what will be. We do not care for analyzing our personal future because we are hardwired to not think about it, just as we are hardwired to not think about our own inevitable deaths. The reason for this is the same reason we have weather forecasts and Vegas over/under lines: we hate uncertainty. With a passion.

Two examples to help me illustrate this point:

Imagine if you were to knock down every wall in an IKEA and take away all of the signs that indicated what section you were in and where you could find certain items. It would take what is already, in my humble opinion, an excruciating experience and turn it into torture. Nothing would make sense without the guide lines there to show us the way, and no doubt the store would have a very difficult time attracting customers. (In fairness, there are people that enjoy sifting through clutter to find hidden gems, much like a child will rifle through a bag of LEGOs in order to find the one block he needs to build something. In these cases the end goal is always clear beforehand, though. I will concede I’m generalizing a bit here.)

My second example is a bit more partial to my job, but think about MySpace versus Facebook. Even without the exclusivity of “college students only” that propelled the latter site to such heights, Facebook was always better positioned to succeed. And the reason for that really comes down to two factors: uniformity and user authenticity. By only allowing users to modify the content they shared, and not the design of the site, Facebook maintains a consistent appearance and style throughout all of its pages. Likewise, the insistence on users listing their real names and using photos of themselves as their profile picture encourages a sense of legitimacy and authenticity to the experience… which, on the Internet, is quite honestly a fucking miracle. The internet is the world of Anonymous, and yet Facebook has over 500 million people (mostly) representing themselves authentically. People are drawn to it because it can be trusted to deliver on these two points.

With time, though, we can’t trust anything that has not already happened. “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” That may be the single most accurate statement ever written, other than perhaps, “The French are rude.” But I digress. The point I suppose I’m driving at is that we live in a society where we are constantly aware of what is immediately in front of or behind us, but we too often fail to see the forest for the trees. Americans, in particular, are guilty of a life where everything must be full-throttle, on the quick, and we’ll sleep when we’re dead. Even I am guilty of this, and I love sleeping in. The unfortunate thing is that this is ultimately a part of our human nature, or so I would posit. You can crush an ant hill and sit and watch as the colony frantically rebuilds its home and laugh at how pointless it seems, but then you’ll go on Facebook and see one of your friends post something like, “Lost phone, need #s.” The catalog of the past matters more than the future, because it is the record of our lives and all that we will leave behind when we’re gone. It’s why photos are the first thing people rush to save in a fire. “Don’t worry,” you can console someone, “all that stuff can be replaced.” But he or she will still feel miserable, because our accumulation of “stuff” — experiences, clothes, phone numbers, friends, CDs — is what defines us. In the end, afterlife or no afterlife, or record of existing on this planet comes from those people, places, and things we touched. On a base level, we realize that; but in the here and now, it’s often too easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle without considering what each action will mean in a day, a week, a year, or even a decade. (Obviously some choices matter less than others so we don’t need to be microscopically analyzing every choice, but bear with me — I already warned you I’d be generalizing.)

But why then do we always wish we could have done more? Why do we work so hard and make so many sacrifices only to look back at the end of each day and reflect on all the things we did not have time to get done? Maybe it’s because, deep down, we hear the seconds ticking away and know that there can only be so many more to come. Maybe it’s because we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and our shortcomings are indicative of how we could improve. Maybe it’s both of those, and more. But control is an illusion. Time is the scarcest resource known to man, and we will always feel as if we are at a lack for it because it is the one thing we can never get back (well, that and your taxes). So we make our decisions deliberately, prioritizing what to get done and what to shelve every minute of every day, knowing full well that every cause will have an effect and that each task completed leaves behind two that we’ll never get to. It’s like a never ending case of buyer’s remorse, us wishing we had been able to have done the other thing or possibly done them all. Perhaps that’s part of human nature, too. For all of our efforts to reduce uncertainty and live life in control of the information available to us, we’ll always feel the need to make that information more complete. Each opportunity that passes us by grates on us because it’s one more data point that must be left blank, like those MP3 files you have without the album art.

“Great,” you may be thinking, “so what was the point of this post again?” Good question. To me, it I appears I wrote over 1700 words of meandering, navel-gazing prose that leaps from point to point without drawing any definitive conclusions, other than life is rather short on definitives but most certainly has a conclusion. Time marches on, with or without us, and it can often feel like a race we’re struggling to stay in. All I know is that in the time it took me to write this, I could have done a load of laundry, taken out the trash, dusted my apartment, and probably read a few news clips to catch up on current events.

But, hey, that’s what tomorrow’s for, right?

Just two months and ten days into the calendar year, I can already say that 2010 is looking to be the next 2008 in terms of killer music releases. The amount of quality releases so far has been nothing short of astonishing, and the prospect for the next four months alone looks good enough to make a top 10 list for the whole year out of it. So I thought I’d use some spare time during an unseasonably chilly afternoon here in Barcelona to jot down a few thoughts on some of the music that I’ve been listening to, and why maybe you should be joining me in doing so. There is no chronological order to this, but it will follow a sort of earliest-to-latest progression in terms of when I started listening to it. Anyway, let’s get down to the brass tacks.

5. Vampire Weekend – Contra

Before you read anything I have to say about this, if you have heard Vampire Weekend before, you have already formed some sort of opinion on this album. There are, as I see it, two categories of Vampire Weekend fans. First are those who enjoy the band’s first eponymous album, but found that it too often delved into quirky, unfamiliar territory. Second are those that lapped the album up, start to finish, with nary a complaint and would happily stand in line a la Oliver Twist to say, “Please, sir, may I have some more?” Well… maybe they would complain about “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” because that song can reach all new levels of sonic horror, but that would be forgiven. The point is, if you’re one of those fans that falls into the second category, this album is for you. Everyone else, newcomers included, might be better off listening to the first album some more before switching over, or sticking with the band’s syrupy-sweet singles from the new LP, such as the fantastic “Giving Up the Gun”.

Given that I’ve already blabbered a bunch without saying anything substantive, let me be a bit more terse here, Hemingway-style. This album is really freaking good. (Did Hemingway use “freaking”?) It’s a pureed delight of pop sensibilities like only VW (the band, not the car company) can deliver. The album starts off with the dreamy, chime-based nostalgia-stirrer “Horchata,” which is subject to frequent harmonies break-downs and funk-outs. The “Oohs” spiral down as the chimes and drums and other instruments which have been lying dormant during the verses come to life, and suddenly there’s a whole new sonic landscape unfolding before you. Truly, a beautiful and telling way to open the album. What follows is, for the most part, no less brilliant. The following song, “White Sky,” takes us back to familiar Vamp territory, with a percussive rhythm and pitchy falsettos from frontman Ezra Koenig that would have been completely at home nestled between “M79″ and “Campus”. The trend continues, ad nauseam: “Holiday” packs that island-style steel drum backing that has, for reasons I cannot decipher, always made me want to compare the band to Fine Young Cannibals. Don’t ask me why. “Taxi Cab” has a wonderful hand-clap and piano background behind a rather understated vocal (for Ezra, that is, though the lyrics are just as sweater-vested as ever), and “Run” is something equally traditional. What is interesting is how the album places its higher tempo songs, “California English” (try to decipher the lyrics on your own… it’s near impossible thanks to the rapid fire delivery and use of auto-tune) and “Cousins” at roughly the 1/3 and 2/3 marks for the album, almost tri-secting it. Interesting, because the album certainly hits the brakes when it gets to its two closers, “Diplomat’s Son” and “I Think Ur a Contra”. Overall my two least favorite tracks, the pop and carefree sugar rush that brought us through 8 tracks suddenly fizzles out — like any true sugar rush, I suppose — and we’re left with the somber, serious Vampire Weekend. This is not the Vampire Weekend I want, nor do I think it’s the VW that most fans want. And yet, I suppose we must let the artist have their way. Hey, at least they put these two at the end, where they are least likely to be heard.

Overall, a very solid sophomore effort, and one that I have played many, many times since its release.

4. Yeasayer – Odd Blood

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that I have listened to this, Yeasayer’s second album, for long enough to have formed a valid and fully justifiable position on it. However, I will recommend this album for one reason, and that reason is track two: “Ambling Alp”. This song combines two very awesome things: a bass guitar effect pedal that turns the bass into this warbling, flute-like main instrument for the whole song, and also, it’s a song that is loosely structured around boxing. What more do you need? A video? Ok, here’s one of that song plus “Tightrope,” which is an even better (!!!) song by the same band that they contributed to the Dark Was The Night album. Granted, the audio quality isn’t stellar on that clip, but at least it’ll send you to YouTube where you can get the job done right. That album, featuring the likes of The National, Grizzly Bear, and The Decemberists, is also very freaking good. Are you noticing a trend yet?

Anyway, the reason I say that I cannot give a completely honest and straightforward opinion on this album is that I haven’t listened to the entire thing as a whole enough times to really get a grip on what it is this band is trying to do. I’ve learned the following: they do pretty solid harmonies, the lead singer’s voice has a crapload of charisma behind it, and they use a great good deal of effects in their sonic spectrum, giving them anything from ’80s-era drum kits to the aforementioned awesome bass-warbling. The result is something like Bowie’s psychedelic pop-funk, only much more modern and probably more synth heavy overall. I can say that not every track is a winner, but there’s a handful on here, like “O.N.E.” and “Rome” that continue to keep me entertained. Overall, the first half of the album is definitely the better, so I’d suggest looking into that first. And, of course, “Tightrope,” which should be mandatory listening at this point.

3. The XX – xx

What, this album released last year? Quiet, you. This makes it on to my 2010 list because it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I ever heard of anything by the XX. After that first blush, though, I knew I needed to hear their whole album. This is how you do minimalism right, folks. You’ve got four band members, two of whom I believe only work drum kits and synth machines. Well, after a quick Google, apparently the keyboardist left from exhaustion, so it’s a trio. Anyway. The others are guitarist Romy Croft and bassist Oliver Sim. The latter contributes a bit under half of the vocals on the album and frequently harmonizes on the choruses, but his contributions — a low, slightly-lisping tenor — pale in comparison to Croft’s, who sounds like some pillow-talking seductress no matter what it is that’s coming out of her mouth. Now, as many people know, I am not by any means a fan of female vocalists. I shirk them whenever possible. But the XX have such beautifully arranged songs, and the tag-team dynamic of the lyrics makes that typical impasse little more than a slight bump in the road. Really, I can’t stress how impressed I was by this band, who came out of nowhere for me and have instantly hit my daily rotation on the commutes to and from classes. The best thing I can suggest is to watch this two-song set at Pitchfork.tv and determine for yourself if you’re interested. Otherwise, this is just going to turn into me delivering the text equivalent of foaming-at-the-mouth blabber over how good this band is. Best tracks: “Basic Space,” “Night Space,” “VCR,” and “Islands”.

2. Spoon – Transference

Predictable, right? A Spoon album makes it on my top 5 list. But wait! This one really is pretty awesome! I pr— okay whatever, you probably stopped reading after the first paragraph anyway.

Ahem.

This really is a unique Spoon album, even though it is in many ways a very by-the-numbers Spoon album. Allow me to explain. First, the similarities. This still, sonically, is the same band. They are still led by catchy, short, three or four chord guitar riffs and a Dum-Ba-Ba Dum-Dum-Dum-Ba drum line. The lyrics range from shoegaze stream-of-consciousness to exclamatory revelations (“I Saw The Light”) to a lover’s soulful moping (“Goodnight Laura”). There’s also the Spoon that the masses have fallen in love with after Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the band who had everyone cheering to “The Underdog” and “Don’t Make Me a Target.” You’ll find your Spoon as consistently gruff and coolly settled in its style of rock’n'roll as you ever will. “Got Nuffin” and “Written in Reverse” are two such examples, although many of the tracks here could easily withstand such a comparison. The point is, simply, that this is the New Spoon, same as the Old Spoon. Or is it?

You see, there’s also a hidden layer to this album that doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention in album reviews as it should, and when it does it’s usually a passing mention. But what Spoon wants you to know, and what I want you to know, is that this is a raw album. About half the songs presented here have had very little clean-up done to them, and quite a few of them end abruptly, as if singer Britt Daniels and drummer Brian Eno sat down after recording to produce and just decided to flip a switch when they got bored with the songs. The track lengths will often mimic that feeling of hurriedness or urgency. Most of the songs are under 4 minutes in length, and those that extend are jaunty affairs with heady concepts (“The Mystery Zone“) or receive the chop-and-stop treatment. Overall, though, the raw, unfiltered sound of the band, after the smooth and heavily produced last outing (see: “The Underdog”), is a welcome reprise. The cuts are sudden but never shocking, and the next track kicks into business before you can even question the artistic motivation behind purposefully producing an album in a way that many could mistake for a rough cut or demo leak.

In the end, though, none of that really matters. This is Spoon, after all. If you’ve heard the band before and enjoyed what they do, then you’re probably going to really like this. Casual fan of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga? I think there’s plenty here for you to like. Really, it’s such a solid, quick, and relatively light rock affair that it almost behooves you to sample it. So, get to it already.

1. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

If you didn’t expect Spoon, then I hope you sure as hell saw this. Released yesterday but having been available online via NPR’s website since last wednesday, the latest Gorillaz album is nothing short of an aural triumph. Is it better than Demon Days? That’s too early to say. It does not have a “White Light,” but it does have “Glitter Freeze,” which is just as easily skippable. Frankly, though, Demon Days has been such a seminal album for me that it will almost impossible for me to love anything Damon Albarn does more than that record, whether he records new material as Blur, The Good, The Bad, & The Queen, Gorillaz, or something else. “El Manana,” “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead,” “DARE,” Feel Good, Inc.” … the list is just too long. So let’s hold off on comparisons and talk about Plastic Beach on its own, which is what it deserves.

The first thing you will realize is that this album follows a very similar format to Demon Days (d’oh!). Both start with a mood-setting intro that is almost devoid of spoken word. In the latter’s case, we were given a dark, foreboding warm-up that hinted at the coming themes of child desensitization, war, death, exploitation of natural resources, and drug usage. Here, the music is light, airy, but somehow still disquieting. Perhaps because it is rather quiet. There’s something in that lack of a first punch, that soft massage when you’re expecting a blow to the ribs, that is so profoundly effective. Even the second track, “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” is disarming. Here we have Snoop Dogg sounding very unlike Snoop Dogg: relaxed, controlled, and definitely toned-down. Perhaps he was taking the beach theme a bit too far while recording? But then we get to the third track, and suddenly Gorillaz’s third outing starts to show signs of life.

“White Flag” isn’t a great Gorillaz track, but the verbal back-and-forth between the guest emcees is certainly engaging enough, and the island sound influencing the beat keeps us on that holiday track. Which is why I so very much love how the album suddenly kicks its own ass and gives us all the Gorillaz track we were waiting four songs to get to: “Rhinestone Eyes.” Wow. What can you say about this song without the other person having heard it? It would be like describing a painting by Picasso without someone ever having seen Cubism before. All I can say is that the track is exactly what you would expect from Damon Albarn in his post-Think Tank era, building on the piano-rich and synthesizer-heavy style heard in TGTB&TQ and Demon Days. It is a beautiful track, and surely to become a fan favorite.

The two singles on the album are then wedged in next to one another, and could not be more divergent. “Stylo” is an out of control Bobby Womack-voiced soulfest about the electrical power of love (Mos Def and Albarn contribute a few lines to open and close the song as well). It is nothing at all like the saturday morning cartoon commercial that is “Superfast Jellyfish,” a new De La Soul track that is about as sugary and the food it starts out describing. It is incredibly catchy, but both feel a bit out of place. One, too heavy and disco, the other, too poppy and zany. In the context of the album, they are ripples in what is otherwise (almost) a glassy-still pond. The other exception? “Glitter Freeze,” as previously mentioned.

The rest of the album flows so well, in fact, that I’ve found myself simply starting my listening at “Empire Ants” and continuing on from there, full ahead (save for one skip). There is so much depth and beauty in these songs… “On Melacholy Hill” is an early favorite for best track, but “Plastic Beach” has some heavy-synth ’80s power pop going that is as infectious as, well, something you probably don’t want to catch. Only this one you do. It also features Mick Jones and Paul Simonon on guitar and bass, so… yeah, it’s pretty effing fantastic. And there are so many other great listens here, “To Binge” and “Cloud of Unknowing” especially, that continue to grow and grow and endear themselves each time you hear them. Whereas Demon Days approached its subject matter with an air of morbid fatality and “too little, too late” warning calls, Plastic Beach uses its serene setting and lighter motifs to ease up on the guilt trip without dialing back the message. These are still songs that hit hard at consumerism and disposability. Almost all mention some sort of recyclable (predominately the titular plastic), waste, or loss. Even songs that mostly seem to be about a lover’s want are somehow a metaphor for our overreaching hunger for wasteful production. I won’t beat you over the head with the message: it’s there if you want it, and if you don’t, just enjoy the music for what it is — another brilliant Gorillaz album.

I love this CD, and it will probably finish in my top 5 this year. That is, assuming the competition doesn’t escalate too much… Which could be tricky, considering what is still to come.

Coming Later This Year: A LOT of Great New Albums

1. Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
2. Caribou – Swim (Single: Odessa)
3. The National – High Violet
4. LCD Soundsystem
5. The Hold Steady
6. Interpol
7. Thom Yorke/Radiohead Project
8. Broken Social Scene (I think)
9. Lupe Fiasco – Lasers (OMG A RAPPER! Yeah, a rapper. Deal.)
10. The New Pornographers – Together

And albums already out i haven’t mentioned, such as those by Joana Newsom, Four Tet, Animal Collective, etc. I haven’t mentioned them because I refuse to believe, based on what I’ve from each artist, that they are as good as the hype that surrounds them. Well… Four Tet isn’t that hyped, but definitely not buying it for the other two. But, hey, it’s only March. They may make a believer out of me yet.

And so that last sentence left me at 2,800 words. What do YOU have to say about the music you’ve been listening to lately? What are you looking forward to? I’d love to know.

There was a series of ads run when I was just entering grade school, all of which tried to drive home this one zany idea: reading is good for you. The ads, paid for by Reading is Fundamental, one of the oldest if not the oldest non-profit organizations in the country, usually featured a celebrity or athlete giving a short PSA about how important it is to read, and some other words of encouragement. While the impact of the campaign is hard to judge in retrospect, thinking back on it now makes me question just how much time children, teenagers, and even college students, spend reading.

Reading is Fundamental featuring Shaq

Granted, I come at this topic from a very biased perspective. Among my close friends, I can only name perhaps a handful that read at their own leisure. The rest will only pick up a book if it has a name like Dan Brown or Harry Potter on the cover. (Those I know reading this that are fans of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, you don’t count because you are sparkly non-humans. Sorry.)

I, on the other hand, read voraciously. Not that I can crush a book in a few hours — I’m actually slow as hell — but I just find it to be an enjoyable experience. A good novel can be just as exciting to me as the latest LOST or Breaking Bad. Plus, I’m sort of a sponge when it comes to information; I’m willing to learn about almost anything, and a lot of the fun in reading a book or watching, say, the Discovery channel is learning about cool shit you would normally never have noticed.

So why is it that the newspaper industry is withering into a frail, forgotten relic of the past and that this new online-enabled generation is so averse to paperbacks? Have Americans finally shucked the last remnants of tradition from their lives or is this part of something larger? I can think of three pretty good reasons for why paper is out, and everything else — movies, TV, gaming, music, youtube, et al — is in:

1. The Move to Online Has Made Reading More Difficult

This is something that a lot of people addressing the fall of print tend to overlook. When reading text online over a long period of time, our eyes feel far more strained than they do when we read printed text. A lot of this has to do with the nature of the display. When we were using CRT monitors, information was being spit out onto the screen in much the same way tube-based televisions work: a line of colors was sprayed onto the glass one line at a time, filling in vertically from top to bottom. This process normally takes place at a rate of 60 or 75 Hz, which means that each line would be “refreshed” every 1/60 or 1/75 of a second. So, when you see footage of a monitor flickering in the background or when your monitor actually begins to flicker, what you’re seeing is actually the switching of the image from the old data to new data. The faster this switch occurs, the more it seems like it was one image. Think of it like spinning fan blades: the fast the fan goes, the harder it is to distinguish the individual blades. By speeding up a refresh rate, we fool our eyes into thinking they’re seeing a solid object, rather than flashes of data.

Still with me? Good.

What this all boils down to is that monitors, since they cannot display solid images, make reading difficult. They are much better suited to displaying video, like a television set, because the motion inherent in that medium masks the constantly refreshing lines of data. Thus, if we are sitting in front of a computer, our brains are naturally going to push us towards watching something on Hulu or Youtube than towards an article from the New York Times. With technology pushing us more and more into a world full of electronic displays and digital data, it makes perfect sense that reading has begun to fall off. It is simply not conducive to the lifestyle we are all adopting.

Thankfully, however, technology works like a pendulum, always coming back to its point of origin before proceeding onward again. New display technologies such as e-ink and OLED (organic light-emitting diodes, for the nerds) promise to make staring at a screen far easier on our eyes. The former, used in e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, displays a static page of text, thereby mimicking the look of printed text. It feels incredibly natural to look at, and serves as a solid replacement for carrying a book or newspaper around with you. Plus, the ability to have thousands of books on one device is a convenience all in of itself. So long as we continue to push for development of these kind of replacement products, reading may still have a shot. “Books” as we know them may not continue to exist outside the world of academia for much longer, but the ideas carried within the will always have a home somewhere.

2. A Surplus of Entertainment

This one is pretty straightforward. Simply put, the internet is a vast ocean of content. There are websites hosting video, only bit players in the online world, that have enough content to let you watch something new every hour for years. Most of them, you haven’t heard of. Others, such as Hulu, Crackle, and youtube, upload so much new material that it would take dedication and a large helping of omnipotence on the viewer’s part to try and consume it all. And that’s just video. We also have audio websites, such as Last.fm and Pandora, that let us find new artists, listen to our favorites, and create our very own personalized radio stations. Plus, there’s a whole world of free web games out there. Kongregate, for example, hosts thousands of titles, has multiplayer and community features, tracks achievements for registered users, and charges nary a penny to do it. And this is just some of the stuff online that I happen to know offhand. We also have iPods, Nintendo DSes, PSPs, smartphones and other handheld devices to carry with us in our back pockets, ready to entertain us at a moments notice, with no need for a light so that you can read at night or a place to sit, since you can’t really walk around reading without running the risk of crashing into someone or something.

The world is, quite literally, at our fingertips. Knowing that, do we really still have time to see if Professor Langdon finds the next clue?

3. The Fickle Consumer

The title is rather self-explanatory. As devourers — because at the rate at which we receive information, be it from twitter, facebook, youtube, whathaveyou, it really is devouring — of media content, we like the flexibility of being able to choose what we’re going to entertain ourselves with in our free time. I can go on Hulu right now and pick from watching an episode of Fringe, or maybe Family Guy, or maybe The Daily Show, or maybe I’ll watch a movie. But nothing is forcing me to watch any of these, or even watch something at all.

Compare that to reading a book. When you crack open the cover on a novel, you feel an obligation to continue reading that damn stack of paper until you’ve reached the end. Most likely that wouldn’t occur in one sitting. But as that book lies on your nightstand, or your desk, you look at it with a sense of foreboding — it must be finished. It isn’t right to stop reading it after three chapters. You’ll never know what happens if you stop now. With TV or film, the commitment is hardly ever more than a few hours. With a book, it could take you months before you reach the last page. That bothers us, a lot.

And so, reading is not beloved, but begrudged. We know that it can be fun — the success of Harry Potter proves it — but yet we also know it can be very tiring, even boring. Hell, “textbook” is practically slang for “bore you to death.” Reading has failed because the nature of the process is unforgiving. A TV show can have a bad episode or scene, but still be worth watching. (Heroes somehow keeps getting renewed, after all.) A book, if its bad, has no fallback. There are no hidden pages glued together; the entire package is there, before your eyes, irreparable for all eternity. So we divest ourselves of reading, of going to the bookstore and picking up a random novel on the shelf, of sitting back on a rainy day and transporting ourselves into the mind of great storyteller. We turn on the TV instead, and tune out.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, did you tune out while you were reading some of this? Did you want to go check someone’s status updates, or just wish I’d get to the damn point already? Did that youtube link just send you off on a tangent of viewing that you never recovered from? Perhaps one of the above is true for some of you. Even so, don’t let the irony of the moment be lost on you. As you just read 1600 words on the slow death of reading, you were in fact preserving that very enterprise. So thank you, for reading, and for valuing words just a little bit more than something else that could have kept you busy for as long as this took to finish. Even if it was just this once.

Though I have been trying to steer myself away from too much political blogging, I believe that the current situation in Iran demands a closer evaluation from all free citizens of the world. What we are witnessing in this country, to me, is something beautifully human: a massive uprising from within an oppressed nation that is both peaceful in nature and ruthless in its accusations. It is millions of “free” citizens crying foul at their government, demanding justice and due diligence from a body politic even the United States dares not trifle with. For the first time since perhaps the Second World War, or maybe even the Bolsheviks, we are looking at what may be the start of a political revolution.

I say “may” because, as is the case with any authoritarian or totalitarian state, the workings of government are not as cut-and-dry as we Americans are accustomed to. Censoring, silencing, and propaganda will and have already played a large role in how the Iranian government subverts any public resistance to its “election” and enforces its own will. However, governments are ancient, slow-moving institutions not designed to handle the lightning-fast pace of modern technological innovations, and any dragnet laid by Iran over the voices of its people will almost certainly be subverted or penetrated by those with the power and the will to tell the free world their side of this story. China has been dealing with this fact for years, and in several cases has even conceded some liberties back to its citizens which it had previously tried to withhold. Still, we cannot expect miracles; Iran will do whatever it can to keep foreign powers from meddling in this situation, and its best chances of accomplishing that goal are to limit the flow of information out of the country as best it can.

I also say “may” because Iran has already proven it is more than willing to use violence to coerce cooperation out of protesters should they not submit to “reason”. If there is an official death count being kept by their government, you can bet your ass we’re not going to be seeing it anytime soon. If we do, the Iyatollah will clear out his cabinet so fast that even Stalin would blush. Put simply, these guys ain’t going down without a fight. This isn’t the French monarchy being overthrown, by the vicious, starving masses. This is shaping up into a battle where the side who has more to lose will be the victor, and right now the Iranian government is the one with the greater look of desperation on its face.

But that’s the great thing about political revolutions and upheavals — the longer they are drawn out passively and without violence on the side of the dissenters, the more righteous that side becomes. The Iranian people protesting need to know that time is on their sides: the longer this goes on, the more time they have to possibly unearth the truth, win over foreign interests to their cause, and force the government to play nicely as the entire world watches with keen interest as each day’s events unfold. Like Obama said in his speech, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Ultimately, whether it be 10 days or 10 years from now, there will be a reckoning for any wrongdoing that may have occurred in this “free” election. The course of nature will ensure this. However, it falls to us, and the Iranian people specifically, to keep the signal fires burning for all to see, so that what has transpired does not find its way swept under the large, smothering rug of history and human disinterest.

But what of our part in this wonderful bit of Iranian Kabuki Theater? There have been cries for our president to take stronger action against Iran, to involve ourselves in the settling of this civil dispute. Personally, I feel that there is no course open to us other than the one we are currently on. Let’s draw an allusion, here. Imagine you are walking through a crowded pubic park and you happen to catch, out of the corner of your eye, a mother slapping her child for something you didn’t see. Regardless of whether the child deserved to be hit, you feel inclined to take action. In America, we know that we are not going to be able to just walk up and punch out the mom while saying, “have a taste of your own medicine, bitch!” It just doesn’t work that way. However, we would be perfectly fine with addressing the mother by saying that it is wrong to strike a child and surely she can find a way to reprimand her children without violence. If the mother is truly abusive, we can notify the police and have the situation resolved by a judicial power that has jurisdiction over something such as child abuse. Ultimately, though the matter may be of our own concern, it is not within our rights to take direct action in response to it.

Now say that the mother is Iran, the child is its people, and America is the bystander. The only major difference between the allusion and reality is that America does not have a police officer to report the wrongdoing to — the United Nations lack jurisdiction over governing bodies and can do little more than a crowd of people would be able to do towards the mother in the story; i.e., it could badger her into submission but mostly just stand there and say, “How could you?” in a really accusatory tone. This is the situation that our president finds himself in, expect in his case the mother would also have a nuclear weapon in her purse. At best, all he can or should do for Iran is let them know that we support the righteous act of seeking justice, and that America is the ally of any party or person pursuing such actions.

As I am a fan of drawing allusions today, I also found it interest that what Obama is faced with now is in some ways not so different than what John Adams was faced with during the first throes of the French Revolution. Back then, Adams was reluctant to rush to the side of France in usurping the monarchy because the nation was still young and reeling from its own violent birth. Also, it would have more than likely shattered ties with Britain, who had become a key trading partner in the late 1700s. For Obama, to side with the dissenting citizens in Iran would be to endanger our already perilous position in the Middle East, to draw the ire of yet another government on the verge of nuclear capabilities, and to cast Americans into yet another foreign war of independence that would put our soldiers in harm’s way and burden us with yet another country to restructure in a region where public opinion of us tends to run rather cold. If Korea and Vietnam weren’t enough proof in the past, the quagmire of Iraq most certainly is. To those of you demanding swifter action and a more hawkish response from the president, I say stay your sabers. There is much yet to gleaned from this fallout, and the one who looks before leaping is almost guaranteed to be better off for it. So watch, wait, and — most importantly — remember what happens next. It could be a long time before you ever see something like this happen again.

Addendum: I don’t know why I bother writing sometimes, especially when the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan says it all so much better than I ever could.

Finishing this today. It’s gross, it’s mostly a build-up for the two sequels, but it’s still almost impossible to to put down. Even when you know that the character you’re reading about is almost certainly going to get offed, you can’t help but wait to see how it happens and cringe at the outcome. Not for the faint of heart, for sure.

Halfway through this, but taking a break to read a bunch of fiction that I’ve been piling up. They call it the definitive book on WWII. Given the step-by-step analysis of the war and the research behind everything, I’d be willing to say that’s probably accurate. Recommended for history buffs who want to read about the entire war in under 600 pages with no pro-/anti-Axis sentiment in the writing.

They call this McCarthy’s masterpiece. Personally, I enjoyed All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country for Old Men far more than this book, but there is something to be said for the sheer shock you feel when reading the levels of violence depicted across these pages. This is a dirty, apathetic, middle finger of a book where every character save one is a walking pile of curses, stink, and booze. However, like Chigurh was to NCfOM, The Judge is the reason you will finish this book. His monologues are heavy-handed lessons in gnosticism and the godliness of the animal-man, but his words and actions build towards a climatic encounter on the book’s closing pages that will have you scratching your head or stunned in disbelief, depending on how you interpret it. For McCarthy fans only. Everyone else, go read The Road or No Country and come back to this one later.

What I will be reading once I finish the Strain. It got a lot of good press last fall and the paperback was like $5.50 at Wal-Mart so I figured I’d give it a shot. Child abduction in Soviet Russia with political intrigue and fur hats is good enough for me to give it a shot.

I read the first few pages of this in Barnes and Noble and I’m already certain I’ll like it. Child is found alone after going out with his friends into the woods, with no trace of the two missing children to be found. The kid then becomes a detective, determined to resolve the case. The writing was really strong and this book and its sequel, The Likeness, get a ton of love on Amazon. Fans of thriller writers like Cussler and Brown should check it out.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of loans–and groans–and politics–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

When America was formed by the founding fathers, it was never intended to be run by politicians from a warring two party system. In fact, our first two presidents, particularly George Washington, abhorred the ideas of “party lines” and dividing the populace between those who supported states’ rights and those that favored the power of the federal government, or even between those that favored slavery over those that did not. First and foremost, we were all Americans, and that truth–in the minds of these great men–was the one and only factor a political party should ever concern itself with. Alas, we barely made it through a decade before it was clear such a wholesome, united vision of America’s future would be cleaved in two: the Federalists falling to one side (and soon to perish entirely) and the mighty Jeffersonian Republicans on the other. The rest is, as they say, history.

The question I propose now is thus: if the unified party structure was truly so deficient in its ability to represent the will of the people that we had to create a schism clean through to the foundation of our republic (i.e., down to the men who fought for it), why were the originators of this great and lasting (fingers crossed, right?) body politic so keen on sticking to it? Were they blinded by the discontent of the southern states — some of whom had gone begrudgingly into war with Britain when talk of independence first sprouted — who wanted nothing more than to keep to themselves and their cotton fields and large plantations, thank-you-very-much? Perhaps they simply shrugged off the complaints they heard over the taxes and tariffs from those states, knowing in their hearts that they were steering the country on the correct path — away from foreign wars and towards control of its own borders — and that the southerners, just like anyone else, could never truly be satisfied with any concession given to them. (The old story of giving a moose a muffin springs to mind.) But could these noble patriots really have the gall and audacity to give their compatriots the cold shoulder “for the good of the country”?

The answer, I think, is that they were, in fact, worried about the demands of the south and the dichotomy of life in the northern, industrial states versus that in the southern, rural states. With a nation so young, having just finished a war for its own independence, could the government withstand infighting much less appeasement of each and every embittered male landowner? No, I do not think so.

The situation is not so very different today. Our government must choose to punish some (the wealthy, the landowners, the elderly, and more importantly the auto industry), while aiding others (the union workers, the lower class, the unemployed, etc.) in what are ultimately small steps in a very large plan to salvage our economy, as well as our nation, from the perilous decline which has shaken the great powers of the world to their cores.

Do I think that Obama is the same as Washington or Adams, struggling to keep our nation out of conflicts while wrestling with the demands placed on him at home as well as abroad? Not entirely. Obama has inherited a war, not avoided one (a la Adams), and if anything his speeches last November should lead us to believe that more conflict, not less, will be in our country’s future as we fight to restore peace (or rather the facade of peace) to countries in the Middle East and crush the Taliban before it can ever again bring harm upon innocent lives. I think there is a dormant aggression in our new leader that many choose to overlook, or even ignore. A man does not get to become President of the United States with sweaty hands and knocking knees; there is a ferocity hidden in even the most tame of democrats (though Van Buren was a bit of nancy boy). Woodrow Wilson, for one, despised war and believed adamantly in the power of diplomacy to resolve disputes (he set the standard for rulers of today, some argue), but still lead our country valiantly to the defense of France and Britain in the First World War. In fact, I think Obama has inherited many traits from his democratic ancestor, including that passion for diplomacy and a strong versing in literature and oratory. But that is a subject for another, very different blog post.

What moves me today is a concern for the divide spreading through the heart of our country. More and more, Americans are picking sides in a war of words and opinions and they are being fueled on by the inflammatory and outrageous political media. If you were to talk to a moderate or conservative American citizen today, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that they would express some sort of opinion that the media tends to lean to the left and that it is in some way rotting away the values of our nation, perhaps even harming our children. My counter to these claims is, of course, that for every wrong or falsehood expounded by a “liberal” outlet, there is an equally wrong claim from Fox News. For a station that began its tenure under the slogan “fair and balanced” — a campaign they still use today, if I am not mistaken — to be so boldly and daftly conservative in its news coverage, I would say that either someone needs to calibrate the scales or Rupert Murdoch is laughing all the way to the bank. But it is too easy to sit here and criticize a media outlet for doing its job in what I must confess is a very effective manner. Fox News, for good or ill, provides a service that people of certain persuasions find entertaining if not informative, and no different can be said of the other cable news channels such as CNN and MSNBC. It is not the messengers that I have my quarrel with, for they can poison both sides if the viewers are not discerning enough. No, my fight is with you, the people.

Let’s wind the clock back a bit, first.

Thomas Hobbes, a famous philosopher, originated the theory of the Social Contract. In short, this theory claims that before humans enter into what we would call a society, there is an agreement, or rather a concession, made by all involved parties to abide by certain principles and forgo certain civil liberties. For instance, we can say that as a society we will continue to work for our own selfish interests (e.g. money, cars, women, booze) and not for those of a collective (communism lost the war, remember?), but at the same time we won’t kill our neighbor if they happen to borrow a pair of hedge clippers without asking. Even though that guy with the dachshund throws really loud parties on weeknights and your pretty sure he’s stealing cable, you leave him alone because that’s what society demands of you. Now here’s the rub, which Hobbes was also cognizant enough to point out (unlike some other philosophers like Kant who just believe they’re right and don’t address arguments): even though we are taught and/or forced to restrict these desires by the social contract, it does not remove them. In other words, you can’t take the jungle out of the tiger. So while we can all line up at the voting booths each November and be cordial to one another as we submit our ballots and walk off with the firm belief that our candidates will be the winner, the truth is many of us could quite easily turn these “civil” elections into far more barbarous occasions. In America, we often hear the social contract referred to as “the Christian thing to do,” or something similar; irregardless of the title, it is clear that logic and education are what keep civilized man civil — if you want to call it God, well, that works too.

But what happens when we remove the contract, or God, from the equation? (Yes yes, He is omnipotent and omnipresent, I know, just play along.) Well, it just so happens there are many such examples of this transpiring in human history, some of which you’ve probably heard of (Nazi death camps, the battle of Little Big Horn, pretty much all of the crusades). So let’s pick one you may not be familiar with.

On July 2, 1816, a French frigate by the name of Medusa was shipwrecked off the western coast of Africa. The ship has run close along the shore and, despite warnings from the crew, the captain proceeded farther and farther into the shallows until the ship at last ran aground. As if the situation were not horrific enough for the passengers, the Medusa had been grounded during a spring high tide, making it very hard to re-float the frigate. To exacerbate the problem, the captain refused to remove the ship’s cannons, weighing over a dozen tons a piece, and so after vain attempts to dislodge ship from sand, the crew began preparing to abandon the vessel. Though 17 men stayed with the ship and a few others made made the 60 mile trek to shore, the majority of the crew found themselves in either the frigate’s lifeboats, or on a raft which was hastily assembled from parts of the Medusa. When a storm threatened to break up the grounded ship, 146 men and one woman hurried aboard the raft and, along with the lifeboats, took to the sea.

The story of the raft can be found in much more detail in either book form or even on Wikipedia, but the pertinent details come from the raft’s next few weeks on the open sea. With half of the raft underwater at almost all times, no drinking water to be found (only wine), and the inescapable burning of the sun overhead, the survivors took very little time to break with whatever social contract they once enjoyed, and soon found themselves in a gruesome, terrifying struggle. Abandoned by the lifeboats, whose passengers had feared being overtaken by the men on the raft, twenty people were killed or committed suicide the first night at sea. More died trying to fight toward the raft’s center, the only part which was not completely or partially submerged, or by being cast off the raft from the turbulent weather. After four days, only 67 men remained. With no food, cannibalism began to tempt the minds and stomachs of the refugees. By day eight, only fifty men remained.

When I first read this story a few months ago, I was reminded of something from the movie The Dark Knight. In the final showdown between the Batman and the Joker, Heath Ledger’s villain, despite having been fully thwarted by both the people of Gotham and the Batman, remains adamant that society is just a loose set of rules and ideals binding people into living dull, ordinary, and sane lives. “Madness is like gravity,” he explains. “All it takes is a little push.” Are the ties that bind us together really so fragile?

In today’s world, the threats we deal with are not as extreme as isolation on the open seas or massive acts of terrorism by a costumed villain. Instead, they come from disturbed youths bringing weapons into their schools or religious radicals asserting their world views through violence. But most importantly, they come from fear.

The media is quick to cover stories in which something terrible has happened, and for good reason: our right brain is designed to feed on primal urges, and the coverage of violence, death, or panic locks in our attention with a kind of animal magnetism. In an industry fueled by market share and ratings, it would be remiss of us to condemn them for taking these actions. Sure, the swine flu scare has been overexposed and most likely has been played up well beyond even its theoretical potency, but with whom does the blame truly lie? Do we assume that the viewer, affixed to his television with unwavering attention, is the victim? Or is it his need for this sort of stimulus which created the broadcasts in the first place? There’s a saying in the business world that one must let no need go unsatisfied, and as entrepreneurs it is ultimately your goal to find one or many unfulfilled needs and provide the product or service that fulfills them. Like most things in the universe, the forces of supply and demand desire to be in equilibrium — hence why television, music, clothing, and culture continue to adapt and react to one another, year after year, decade after decade. We are all, inevitably, in search of our own sort of personal “happy medium.” The problem is, a perfect equilibrium is an impossibility in this world, and so we continue to adjust and make due with the changes over time — to roll with the punches, if you will. Thus, I stand by my statement earlier that the media is not the issue, as it is ultimately a force seeking to help some of us find that balance.

The problem is with the players, not how the game is being played. According to the social contract, or in less abstract terms the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, we all enter society as equals (“all men are created equal”). However, the benefits given to us as individuals are perfectly heterogeneous — that is, not one person will share the same education, family background, interests, hobbies, skills, etc. as another. By adulthood, we are no longer a nation of “united” states, but rather individual states.

And herein lies the problem with union, be it the Union that is the good ol’ U.S. of A. or the union between you and a friend. Because we are all our own persons — something I am personally a big fan of; monotony sucks — eventually there will arise an issue that two people cannot agree upon. Expand this to a massive scale, and, tada!, you have just found yourself in the battle between Democrats and Republicans. While one side clamors for the end of abortion, the other shouts that individuals rights and beliefs are what make this argument even possible, and therefore the practice should be upheld as a legal option for a mother and her child (or to be permitted by the social contract, you could say). For these same reasons, we can find ourselves caught in conundrums. A right-leaning college educated male who is a devout Christian can support the death penalty, even though his religion forbids murder. Why does he support it, even if his education and spiritual beliefs tell him otherwise? Perhaps his father was gunned down in a convenience store robbery, and he feels justice must sometimes be exacted at the “eye for an eye” level. Or perhaps it’s just a result of the chemical composition in his brain, as a scientist might argue (sometime scientists suck, I know).

(A quick aside: in preparing for this post, I joked with a friend that the only perfectly harmonious society that has ever existed, to my knowledge, was the jellyfish, which in some species will actually link up to form massive colonies that work sort of like a school of fish. The catch is that jellyfish have no brains, and so any decision they make to live as a colony is purely out of some sort of reaction on the chemical level, thus proving my point once again that allowing people, or at least certain people, to think is the source of all our problems. Why is Paris Hilton famous again?)

I know that these are challenging ideas and very large concepts that I am attempting to condense into a very abstract argument, but if you’re still with me, I am grateful. My point today, or rather the idea that I hope to impress to you readers, is that if there is ever to be a reconciliation, a redrawing of the social contract, it has to begin at the most fundamental level–with you and I. The more we make ourselves aware of why we take certain actions, the more capable we are of controlling those actions and not letting those actions control us. Much like my last politically-charged post, think of this as a sort of call to arms. The next time you find yourself nodding in agreement with one of the talking heads on TV, take a minute to try to reason out why it is that you’re nodding. Our minds are always looking to solve puzzles and make the irrational world make sense. Try to harness that ability on a conscious level. It’s like one of those draw-by-numbers books: you start off just connecting the dots, and by the time you finish, there’s a freaking Pegasus leaping off the page.

Believe it or not, this is the principle upon with our government was built. Why do you think people joke about writing a letter to your congressman? Because, a long time ago, it actually did more than jack and shit. Our politicians are representatives of the will of the people, and therefore the power of the country lies in us, not them. We can sit by and watch as the Dems and Reps on Capitol Hill bicker with one another about the future of our country, or we can use our voices and speak up. I’m not saying you need to start watching C-SPAN — I’m not a sadist. But if we want to stop party politics from becoming the new class lines, ignorance is not an option. In the future, will Romeo not be allowed to marry Juliet because his family supports gay marriage and hers still calls African Americans “colored” people? A difference of opinion can be a great thing in a friendship, or even a relationship. Lord knows I don’t agree with my friends on every issue (though most of the time it’s because they’re just utterly wrong), but we’re still friends all the same. Just because your religion tells you homosexuality is wrong does not mean all gays are riding shotgun with Lucifer on the highway to hell. But still I see the judgment in people’s eyes when two guys seem a little too close to each other. I’m sorry, I thought it was the 21st century. Haven’t we gotten past this yet?

Bottom line: the code of conduct in our society is not written in words, but in actions. Do not let ignorance and fear act as controlling forces in your mind. We do not need to be categorized by party, social class, or sexual interest — labels are a shortcut to help make expressing negative opinions easier. Fight them. Think through your actions and understand the sources of your beliefs. Deduction, my dear Watson, is a wonderful thing.

Pay attention to your surroundings; don’t let things happen to you, let yourself be the one who dictates the change. There is no way to please everyone, so focus on doing what’s right for yourself; more often than not, it will be what’s best for everyone.

And for the love of God, if you get shipwrecked somewhere, don’t eat the person next to you. He might have swine flu.

America is marching into the future not willingly, but kicking and screaming. I can hardly blame her.

For those of you reading this out of boredom or simply because you’re wondering what I’m talking about now that the headline and intro have grabbed your attention, perhaps you’ve missed the news of late. Here’s a brief recap:

The auto industry is floundering. I mean, it doesn’t have just one foot in the grave; it’s got on its Sunday best, the coffin is ready to be lowered, and they say the service is going to start at any minute. If you’re working for Ford or GM, you thank God you got to go to work today. If you work for Chrysler, well let’s face it, you don’t work for Chrysler any more because it is about to perform its great vanishing act. I’m being a little lighthearted about a very grave situation for many, many Americans, but let’s face it, folks: GM and Ford got called to the principal’s office and I don’t think they’re coming back with just a few weeks of detention.

Which moves us into the second phase of the recap: what’s been going on over at Capitol Hill? A lot, but you’d hardly be at fault for not noticing, given that the world is still broken. Most recently, there’s been a big huff about CO2. See, that was a pun. But seriously, carbon dioxide is bad, m’kay — at least, so say the EPA and our new leader, President Obama. A daring new ruling has just hit the Oval Office after two years of study. Back then, in 2007, Bush was dealing with a ruling by the Supreme Court over whether or not CO2 was a harmful substance, and if it was should the EPA be tasked with regulating it. Well, word has now just conveniently got back that, hey, CO2 is pretty fucking terrible for the planet, and we should probably stop making so much of it.

Now, that sounds like a good idea, right? Well I certainly thought so back in October when Obama was calling for a Cap’n'Trade policy on greenhouse gases. Back then, the general idea was that greenhouse gases were really bad, and in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as well as rescue the earth for suffocation, we would limit the amount of pollutants we release as country, and charge ourselves if we went over the set limit. Noble idea, no?

Apparently “no” was what Congress thought. Six months, a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and a new Democratic president later, the Senate votes almost unanimously that no ruling on emissions control should be passed if it raises the prices of electricity and fuel. Whoa. Didn’t we just, you know, vote for the guy that said, quite publicly, we will limit emissions and tax ourselves for using too much? And now Congress is all like, “Whoa buddy. In case you didn’t notice there’s a recession going on. We can’t really afford all these wacky ideas of yours.” Obama’s response? “Yes, you can.”

Remember that bill I mentioned regarding the EPA? Well Obama certainly did, and now he’s wielding it in the form of a gun, trained on the Senate. Here’s the ultimatum: either the Senate sticks to its guns and says no to cap’n'trade, or Obama will likely enact EPA control over CO2 emissions, assuming it is within his power to do so. That, folks, would be very, very bad. Whenever the government is in charge, it usually is pretty bad, but when it comes to air? Do you think we can just warden off our air and separate it from China’s or Europe’s? There isn’t even a plausible way to differentiate air polluted by the US and air polluted by Mexico (well, the smell of tacos might tip us off…)! If the EPA forces sanctions on limiting emissions, not only would the failing Auto industry be the first to die, but the energy grid would be next in line (even though it should be first in line, since it creates the majority of our pollutants, at about 34%). That’s bad. Real bad.

But what about Obama’s cap’n'trade plan, though? Honestly, I really don’t know. Lesser of two evils? Certainly. The right way to go? Maybe. The right move for our country right now? I’m not so sure.

Our country, no, the entire world, is going to have to stand accountable for the gluttonous consumption of the past at some point in the near future. We will all be judge, jury, and executioner for one another, and the consequences will no doubt take a heavy toll on us all. The high and mighty will surely be the first to be cut down and sacrificed, sinners and merchants of death all of them (ya right), but it will be you and me, dear reader, who will have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Wasn’t there something I could have done to help stop this?”

There was, and still is. Make no mistake, and do not doubt your decisions so far. Barrack Obama was the correct choice for president. Regardless of whether or not his policies are the safest or most sound, we now have a president that is willing to give us all a swift kick in the ass and get us back on our feet… though I admit the logistics of that make it sound like he’s just a bully. Still! we must press on. The banks and the foreclosures were only the beginning of a long and drawn out reckoning. But with every institution that falls, a lesson is learned and a new opportunity springs forth. Personal computers stopped selling? Smartphones and netbooks (very small laptops) have sprung up to take their place. The housing market is stagnant? Could you pick a better time to be looking for an apartment or condo, you fresh out of college, broke-ass student? Chrysler is going bankrupt? Did you that they were ranked as one of the worst car manufacturers in the world by Consumer Reports? Did you know that Chapter 11, should they fall into it, would allow the company to restructure and actually have a chance at being less terrible than it was before? Black cloud, silver lining, so on and so forth.

It’s not all coming up roses, but then again it never did to begin with. We’re humans; we stand up, walk forward, trip, fall down, and pick ourselves back up. If there never were any mistakes to learn from, there would be no interest in trying anything new. (Why try to fly if we weren’t born with wings? Even then, it’s not like the Wright Bros. got it in one take and stopped there.)

Right now, the government is too scared of the new to accept any lesson it may be taught. I say go ahead and make the leap. No matter the outcome, we’re bound to be better by it.

(P.S. The title of this post refers to the climax of Atlas Shrugged, when John Galt explains that if he were to meet the Titan Atlas and consult him about his enormous burden, there would be no greater sign of defiance, or personal strength, than to shrug the weight of the world off as if it were nothing. So to all of you reading this worried about your personal futures in these dire times–shrug.)

One of my favorite sayings goes something like this: “I may have been born in the ‘80s, but that doesn’t mean I’m proud of it.” To me, the ‘80s are a time where American culture found itself carried away with excess and glamour; people worried more about the pomp and circumstance than they did about pressing issues. Maybe it was the bad economy. Maybe they were just tired of the feel-good ;70s. Whatever the reason, the big hair, power ballad ‘80s are a time very much unto their own. With all that preening and posing, it’s easy to see why the grunge movement took off in the early ‘90s – people got fed up with all the synths and electronic drum kits and commercialism and wanted to make something as raw and emotional as they could. But that’s a topic for a different paper.

Truth is, ‘80s music is not as utterly wretched as I or some others might lead you to believe. Certainly this class has shown us that there was a lot to enjoy about the ‘80s, at least when you’re comparing the music of the decade among itself. For instance, singer-songwriters did manage to stay above the rising tide of pop music for the better part of the early ‘80s, with bands such as Dire Straits and artists such as Bruce Springsteen building on their work in the 1970s to produce some truly significant albums. Born in the USA is, after all, one of the top selling records/CDs in the world, and Dire Straits was able to cleverly weave pop culture allusions (“I want my MTV”) into matter-of-fact anti-consumerist, anti-commercialism lyrics (too provocative to quote) with their hit “Money For Nothing”. Plus, some of the big stars were pretty good too.

It goes without saying that Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince have had an enormous influence on the world of music as well as the evolution of pop culture over the past twenty five years. Jackson made music about so much more than just the words and the rhythm – he turned it into a visual, physical, and auditory art form, gracing each part with a touch of his unmistakable genius. Off the stage, he has since provided us with dozens of “Wacko Jacko” antics, fueling countless water cooler discussions and serving as a great example for rising pop stars of what not to become. Still, dangling babies and questionable conduct towards children aside, we can’t help but have a soft spot for the King of Pop. May he someday find his senses.

Madonna and Prince are another story, however. While it’s certainly possible that Madonna may now be just as criminally insane as MJ, I have to say I was never a fan of her music. This is most likely because I have an older sister who has been obsessed with Madonna since I was old enough to know what music was, but I like to think it has more to do with the fact that I am just a very discerning listener. Either way, I got my sister back by blasting the soundtracks to Ghostbusters II and Batman, both movies nearly as old as me that I watched religiously as a young boy (ghosts and Batman, come on). So I guess that means that I couldn’t hate ‘80s music as much as I might think I do. Then again, I had no idea that almost every song in Batman was by Prince until maybe middle school, so I can’t say I was much of a music “gormandizer” at that point.

Now that I have that knowledge, though, I can safely say that Prince was a pretty awesome guy. “When Doves Cry” is perhaps one of the best pure pop songs to come out of the ‘80s, and if it wasn’t for Prince the world might never have been introduced to Carmen Electra – hard to imagine, I know. All in all, a pretty awesome guy that unfortunately couldn’t escape the ‘80s pop artist mid-life crisis curse. To recap, the victims known to have suffered this curse are: Michael Jackson, who after the mid-‘90s found himself falling apart, mentally and physically; Madonna, who turned into some sort of techno-Kabala groupie around the year 2000 and has since gone on to help destroy Major League Baseball, one love affair at a time; and Prince, who decide to turn himself into “The Artist,” aka “weird sex icon thing,” and make mediocre music for about ten years. He’s been on the mend since his millennium celebration concert, though, so I hope we can see the same from some other successful groups that I liked.

The Police, as one such example, rallied together to perform once more as a trio just last year, and word is that the concert tour was a big success. For a band that helped to bring reggae mainstream and had some absolutely killer albums in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I think that’s absolutely terrific. Very few bands are able to pull off, as we called it in the first part of this class, “the second act”. The Police are poised to do just that, and I’m looking forward to it. Personally, I always though Sting was a bit of a weird guy – and he played a pretty nutty sadist mercenary in that old sci-fi movie Dune – but my Dad listened to him and the Police a lot around the house so I guess I have a bit of a soft spot for him. I’m just glad that I can look back on one of those groups I was sort-of forced to listen to as a child and say, “Oh, the Police, I really like what they did on Reggatta de Blanc and Synchronicity. I hope they get back into the studio soon.”

Unlike a lot of ‘70s bands (I guess the Police are a ‘70s band, technically), I didn’t listen to much of the music from the ’80s and retain what I was hearing. Bands like Eagles and Led Zeppelin really stood out to me and made me want to spend my hard-earned allowance on their greatest hits collections, but I think the only ‘80s record I bought as a kid was Genesis’ self-titled album. (For the record, I will state that I think Phil Collins was a good musician back in the day. I’m just not sure I’m ready to add him to my iTunes yet.) I laugh about it now, but since my exposure to the old decades were mostly what I heard on the radio – Whitney Houston, Genesis, Steve Winwood, Madonna… what you’d expect from easy-listening stations – and computers were not yet advanced enough to allow me to browse through online music catalogs to find my own personal taste, I was pretty short on options.

And that gives me pause. One thing I’ll be envious of the next generation of music listeners for having is the utter ease with which they will be able to find new music. I personally didn’t seriously start defining my own taste until after the rise of the MP3, and even then I was reading Rolling Stone and half a dozen music websites just to try and track down artists similar to those I knew I liked. Now, I can just select a song in iTunes, and the Genius sidebar in the program will give me 20 or so suggestions. My greatest hope for the Millennials is that they have the good sense to opt not to listen to the pre-packaged Disney schlock being hurled at them from all directions and instead seek out their own favorite artists and groups. At least, after this class, I could tell them that, hey, the ‘80s aren’t such a bad place to start. Because if it weren’t for the ‘80s, with all those synths and electronic beats, Radiohead might not have delved into electronica to make OK Computer, Blur wouldn’t have made albums like Parklife or Modern Life is Rubbish, Trent Reznor may have had nothing to rebel against, and we would never have been able to roll our eyes today at those ‘80s holdovers like Ace of Base and Savage Garden. Does that sound like a life worth living?

The music of the 1970s consists of a collection of some of the most diverse and challenging rock and roll music recorded in perhaps all of the genre’s history. Whereas the ‘60s were a decade when rock first found a mainstream audience, the ‘70s were a time when rock began to stretch out and find new forms of expression— encompassing both classical styles as well as the latest in recording technology, such as synthesizers and electronic instruments. Whether it was the birth of heavy metal, the growth of the art/progressive rock movement, or the success of an idea as crazy as a rock opera, the ‘70s didn’t just open the door for new opportunities in rock and roll, it blew the whole wall down.
Granted, most of this progression began in the late ‘60s, with artists such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys creating dynamic and incredibly complex studio efforts in albums like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper. This movement, which began with the artists themselves, sought to make the most out of what an album could be. By capitalizing on the freedom of the studio space and the ability to layer so many textures of sound over the traditional arrangement of vocals and instruments, rock music began to travel down several exciting new paths.
The first of those was almost a return to rock and roll’s roots – only much, much louder. You could say that it began in the 1960s with the Yardbirds, which included many of the ‘70s most prominent heavy rock group. But Led Zeppelin wasn’t merely carrying on the legacy of its past success; its tremendous success is evidence enough that this was not the case. Rather, Zeppelin took blues music and made it rock music. Much like how Elvis Presley could take a country song and make it R&B, Zeppelin could take a classic blues song and turn it into “When the Levee Breaks.”
Likewise, the Eagles did much of the same with their own enormously successful sound. Their early works, in particular the Desperado album, showed not only that could country music be harnessed to create massive pop classics, but also that there was a whole world of Americana and Western-tinged storytelling to be explored through the channels of music. These two bands, each self-contained, no-frills acts, represent the heart and height of rock music in the early-to-mid ‘70s. They relied on only the merit of their artists talents and inspirations, and carried the traditional “rock band” from its heyday in the ‘60s to, well, we’ll talk about the ‘80s another time. Either way, the ‘70s were more than just guitar, drums, and bass. There were breakthroughs to be made.
Onward and upward. By definition, these are the things we would associate with progress. In the 1970s, however, the term began to take on its own meaning. Progressive rock was a movement by the artists to bring more to rock and roll music – more sounds, more diversity, new subject matter, more exploration of the new technology. Like most of this decade’s musical styles, progressive/art rock began in the 1960s with the psychedelic movement. Relying on heavy guitar distortion and abstract lyricism, this style of music saw great success in the hands of groups such as Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and several other San Francisco acts. However, something special happened in the 1970s. Music was no longer about how to best express yourself to the listener in the form of a vinyl disc; it was about actually performing that music to the listener. And to accomplish that, the live show became an extraordinary affair.
Forgive the digression, but this is something that I feel has been mostly overlooked by this class, or at least never directly discussed. The artists of the ‘70s put on absolutely astounding shows. The technical level of production required for the light shows and synchronized fireworks displays alone are mind boggling. Heck, Pink Floyd could only do so many shows for its The Wall tour because the set cost too much! But it wasn’t just the progressive artists, such as Pink Floyd, Yes, and Genesis. Soul and funk music, largely African-American genres, had artists such as KC & the Sunshine Band and Earth, Wind, and Fire putting on just as extravagant, if not even more outrageous, performances. And then of course there is the world of heavy metal. If the antics of Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper weren’t enough to get you fired up then, you must not have really been alive. Simply put, there was no better time to see a band live, particularly because there were so many great bands performing, than in the 1970s. Again, we’ll talk about the ‘80s another time.
Speaking of heavy metal, though, we find still more evidence to prove that the 1970s were some of the best years for rock and roll. Not since the ‘50s had the world seen the birth of a new major musical genre (doo-wop, soul, and psychedelic were all still heavily reliant on their forebears). Somehow, though, I don’t think that anyone had expected the next child to be Heavy Metal. Here we have a genre heavily influenced by the baroque and classical musical styles, often draped in layers of the demonic and morose, that just happens to conveniently be loud as all get-out. Perhaps not quite The Who loud, but, well, Rodney James Dio and Ozzy would probably care to argue about that. Even Led Zeppelin is often slotted into this category, though given their lyricism and musical inspirations, I would wager this is largely due to a combination of “Stairway to Heaven” and people being jealous of how awesome Jimmy Page is. Anyway, metal is a truly brilliant, beautiful thing to behold, even if you despise what it sounds like or what you may think the songs may or may not be about. In its infancy, Black Sabbath wasn’t much different from a group such as Fleetwood Mac. While the latter group chose to address its internal strife through its records, Sabbath chose to address the world’s strife through its songs. The result was an initial release of several great records, namely 1971’s Paranoid. Though the band was still “limited” (as some might argue) by Ozzy’s vocal abilities, the lyrics were dark, direct, and on-point. War-commentary (“War Pigs”) melted into social anxiety (“Paranoid”), and it became very clear very quickly that Heavy Metal was here to stay. As for the other acts we studied, such as Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and Judas Priest, all are equally commendable for exploring the genre and releasing some tremendous bodies of work, but Metal for the most part belonged to Sabbath in the ‘70s. The next decade may or may not be another story, however.
There was a whole lot more music in the ‘70s than what I was able to jot down in just a few pages—I almost feel remiss for not touching on Steely Dan and Billy Joel – but that just proves how explosive the decade was in terms of musical output. Forget what you thought of the ‘60s, that was all just Beach Boys, Beatles, and Motown by comparison. As America entered the decade of its 200th anniversary, the fountains of creativity both here and across the pond were overflowing with hit after hit after unbelievable hit. There was no “Dark Side” of the ‘70s, just Dark Side of the Moon, Hotel California, Paranoid, Tommy, The Stranger, Physical Graffitti, and so, so many other great LPs. On the other hand, I guess I may have forgotten about disco.

A girl I worked with over the summer told me that I have an old soul. I understood what she meant by it at the time, but there are times when I wonder whether or not I can agree with her declaration as I did that day. There’s something in me that clings to childish naivety and impish joys despite the clocks, calendars, and planet all spinning against my will. I have come, in recent years, to relish the sappy, life-loving nature of animated films–the real ones, not the Saturday morning sugar rushes–and several in particular have brought me to experiences that I couldn’t replicate in any live action film or stage play. A book, perhaps, but only because words can reach limits of the imagination no physical media could ever possibly grasp.

I speak of movies like Pixar’s Ratatoille and Wall-e. Two beautiful films about love–a passion for food in the former; a love at first sight in the latter–that massage the heart strings like the experienced, familiar hands of a concert violinist. It’s not just that they achieve so much emotion in their characters, rats and machines, but rather it’s the pure, simple, and honest feeling behind every action and moment that makes them so powerful. When that rat sits on the edge of a pot of soup and makes it into his own creation, he is a place worlds away… there’s nothing that could replace that sensation. Likewise, when Eve tries to repair Wall-e at the end of the movie and you think he’s lost his memory, your can almost feel your own heart breaking with hers. And she’s just a white, egg-shaped robot!

But it’s because they aren’t people playing roles, it’s because they’re characters completely and totally developed and enveloped in their own worlds, that we feel this way. If Daniel Craig was staring into Angelina Jolie’s eyes and couldn’t remember who she was, only that he was a garbage man, would we feel like crying then? Perhaps. But we’d know that it’s just Daniel Craig acting. With animation, that animal, object, or even person transcends its cels or pixels and makes its existence a reality. For 90 minutes, we can live in a world where rats love cooking or robots can feel emotion. When we’re in that dark theater, or even lying in bed watching TV, animation invites us along for the ride. It’s bright, colorful, and full of whimsy–or even, in films like Spirited Away, foreign and frightening–altogether a place NOT possible in reality… but wouldn’t it be nice to visit for a while, just to see what life could be like?

Tonight, I watched another film that took me into its world and warmed my soul. Unlike Pixar’s films, this one was set a little closer to our own reality, but with its own special twists. At first, I wanted to leave, to come back to my own world and stay there. But after a while I started to care about what was happening here. I started paying attention to the heroine’s plight. I wanted her to be Eve, and get her Wall-e back. And when the end finally came, I was, like one of the characters in the film, sad to be returning home… yet grateful for ever having had the experience at all.

The movie is called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and I recommend it to anyone who, like me, doesn’t mind letting their heart take you to new places every now and then. It’s a Japanese anime that has received high amounts of praise since its release in 2006, and I think that, like Spirited Away, it is proof that even in the world of CGI and Pixar, cel-drawn art still has that magical quality.