This is something interesting.
I have to think about it.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/bin-laden-family-reportedly-held-in-iran/?hp

The Quiet Rebellion

The people I know who are rebelling meaningfully, you know, don't buy a lot of stuff. And uh um and don't don't get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend four or five hours researching an election rather than going by commercials.

The thing about it is that in America, we think of rebellion as this very sexy thing and it involves action and force and looks good. My guess is the forms of rebellion that will end up changing anything meaningfully here will be very quiet and very individual and probably not all that interesting to look at from the outside.

I'm now hoping for less interesting than more interesting. Violence is interesting. Horrible corruption and scandals, rattling sabers and talking about war and demonizing a billion people of a different faith in the world- those are all interesting.

Sitting in a chair and really thinking about what this means and why the fact that what I drive might have something to do with how other people in parts of the world feel about me isn't interesting to anybody else.

That was very close to the truth, but I don't think it's going to make much sense. And plus, I mean I'm a writer, not a politician or a political thinker or anything. Just a scared little American... living in California.

David Foster Wallace in a long ranging 2003 interview for German television.

I find this interview extremely interesting, not just because Wallace is one of my favorite writers, but that you can see the man behind the work he's created. Two things that I immediately recognize in him is how his long battle with depression has worn him, and his brilliance. He's clearly the smartest person in the room and he's also terribly self-conscious. He is extremely uncomfortable throughout the interview, perhaps not just with the idea of the interview itself (which is clear) but with the way in which his intellect is being put on display. The man is incredibly complex. Full of contradictions. By his reactions to the dialogue with the woman interviewing him, you can see how blazingly fast his mind works. And his extreme humanness.

Someone could write a behavioral thesis just on the interplay between the characters in this interview.

What Went Wrong?

What Went Wrong With Obama's Healthcare Plan?

Democrats didn't act like Republicans.

Re: Sarah Palin

This.

New Pencil Sharpeners

I don't want this post to turn into some sort of Andy-Rooner-ish rant, ("I remember in my day...") but pencil sharpeners have changed.

Even as a child I exhibited the classic symptoms of the anal retentive accountant type personality I would grow into. I get my perfectionism from my mom; my rapidly diminishing sit in front of the computer all day side comes from my dad. Good riddance. I used to take extreme interest in getting my pencils to the most perfect, sharpest point that I could. I would readily break the lead to get the point to where I was able to write with the tiniest of points.

Now that I have occasion to use red pencils again, I find that pencil sharpeners have themselves changed to thwart my desires. You can see the As Seen On TV ads now:

Are you tired of pencil sharpeners always breaking your leads? It makes it impossible to write and what a mess! Now you never have to break a pencil end again with the amazing new...

The design is basically the same. A razor blade set in a box with a conical opening in one end for the pencil. Some frickin' genius got the idea that if you angle the blade more sharply towards the opening end, you sharpen less of the pencil and no longer elongate the end of the lead so much that it breaks off. The lead is more structurally sound.

However, the end no longer gets pointy, as you're sharpening less of the pencil to expose the lead. So you end up with a chipped, sharded end that is impossible to write with in miniature.

I tell you, people, If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Also, I have very strange fixations.

Sanford II

Maureen Dowd, when not plagiarizing helpless bloggers, often has very good points to make. She wraps this slightly overlong critique of the Sanford saga with a nice bow:

The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced.

Assorted

I. Difficult Books

My brother and I have both been reading On Space and Time (Majid, et al.) The gist is this:

What is the true nature of space and time? These concepts are at the heart of science, but they remain deeply wrapped in mystery. Both house their structure at the smallest pre-subatomic and the largest cosmological levels continues to defy modern physics and may require revolutionary new ideas for which science is still grasping. This unique volume brings together world leaders in cosmology, particle physics, quantum gravity, mathematics, philosophy and theology, to provide fresh insights into the deep structure of space and time.

Sounds complex, right? My brother says that he read it for eight hours the other day and made it to page 48. I applaud our Moxie. It can only be described as dense.

Actually, I put it down months ago to focus on Infinite Jest (Wallace), which is allegedly about the pursuit of happiness (hey, what great American novel isn't?) but is really about addiction of all kinds and what happens when the thing you love begins to destroy you. I was egged on (sorry) by Dave Eggers' foreword in Infinite Jest to read the book. In his world, it took him a month. I think it may have so far taken me at least half again as long, and I'm only about halfway through.

The point is this: you power through it. You put your head down and go through with it. Committ to something, one thing, any little thing at all, and follow through, and it will make it 1 million times easier to committ to something else, another thing that must be done. And when you complete that, you can go on completing things and that's the way you get things done in this world.

II. America's Drinking Problem

In the past three months, I have had conversations with two friends regarding drinking. We arrived at the topic innocently enough; they both volunteered that they feared they were functional alcholics. This is not a prideful discussion, mind you. No bragging here. Just simply my friends' confessions that they had taken a quick look outside themselves and realized that they drank, like, a lot.

A lot? Well, how much?
Everyday.
How much everyday?
At least one. Almost always more than one. More than two.

For the record, no behavior problems have been reported. Said friends are stalwart, level and professional. But the warning has been tripped somewhere in their heads. Ease up, it's going to your gut.

For the record, Pokerface listened to the two friends and compared notes. If anything, Pokerface believes it highly likely that he drinks quantifiably more and more often than aforementioned friends. Pokerface has (clear) memories of evenings on which a twelve pack would be shared between two friends. And that happened most nights. Except for maybe certain nights when it would involve that twelve and then another few here and there. Maybe four more. Pokerface does not drink and drive. Pokerface does not beat his wife or abuse his friends. Pokerface no longer even feels elevated when he drinks. It's just these long, slow, smooth times where next day's hangovers are flat and thirsty.

We live in an alcohol drenched society. In our culture it is both permissible and expected that we drink heavily. It's how we make fun happen. And that's okay, mostly. Because no one is forcing you to drink, they're just suggesting it rather fucking heavily. Loosen up, you've had a hard day. Forget it now.

I have not had a drink in two days.

Sanford

It's a pity that the discussion revolving around this highly personal event in Mark Sanborn's life isn't garnering slightly more empathetic and perhaps wistful views of love in modern middle age. After all, reading the rags I do, we've been bombarded this week with criticisms of the institution of marriage and (reviews of) tomes on the bankrupt state of romantic love in our society.

And here is Mark Sanborn showing us that romantic love is clearly not dead.

We all knew it wasn't, really. Romantic love is going to stick around, probably forever, because that's the way it's done all over the animal kingdom. If your species has two sexes, you probably have courtship behavior. Likewise, if your species enjoys social groups, your young have a long gestation or juvenile period, and mating pairs form long-term bonds, it's more likely that your courtship is going to be really complex. That's why sociologists and anthropologists study it. But in more than a social or cultural aspect, it's a combination of events and mutually-reinforcing behaviors and emotions.

Courtship = Attraction + Respect + Fear of Rejection

That's a very clinical description for a scenario that we are very lucky to have to undergo with any degree of intensity in our lives.

You are thunderstruck by the other human being. From the daily scenery of faces, the other stands in relief. When you see them, your heart drops through your stomach as though the elevator you were in started going up much too fast. The other is "interesting," a trait that becomes more novel and fragile the older you get. You may or may not experience your loins stirring. The other is a wonder. That's the beginning. What happens next gets way more complicated depending on your situation.

Those of us who satisfy the twin requirements of responsibility and domestication tend to extinguish and compartmentalize until whatever strange fire afflicting our emotional ship burns itself out. This path more chosen makes trades we may later regret; we limit the emotional damage to ourselves and regret a lost opportunity later in lieu of loving (boldly or secretly), experiencing, learning. The institutions we build in this life are too fragile to risk even at the cost of the expansion of our souls. Just look at Sanborn. He loved, and lost. He lost the other, his career, the relationship with his spouse, with his children, his financial security, and the integrity of his psychological home. Maybe more.

But he will always have the memory of her.

It's clear that Mark Sanborn is a Good Man. He's acted like a man in so many ways here. Here's Sanborn being man (enough) to be stunned by another and to compartmentalize. Then man enough to give into those emotions. Man enough to go with it and act on those emotions. Man enough to admit a lapse of responsibility. Man enough to apologize for it all to a roomful of strangers who he never wronged, but may have had events unfolded differently. And he did it internationally.

Probably a better man than I.

I don't know why you're reading this. You weren't invited and you're not welcome. Piss off.

Give me Slack, or give me death.