Government, Marriage, and the Church

I have to admit, right from the start, that I have only a very few true friends who are not fully in support of marriage equality; my views about “the other side” of this fight may not be wholly representative.  If I’ve left out your “better arguments against” marriage equality, let’s just consider that a topic for future essay.

Also, I know that some of the people reading this essay will be progressive Christians—those in favor of marriage equality across the board.  Obviously, this essay is not aimed at you.  It’s for people who believe the “traditional” definition of marriage should be the law of the land; I have seen neither hide nor hair of a non-religious person who uses the word “traditional” to defend their position against marriage equality.

This argument does not address many of the issues religious folks have about marriage equality: the (false) idea that gay parenting is bad for children; the (ridiculous) idea that homosexuality is culturally contagious; and let’s not forget the offense to God—If the Southern Baptists are to be believed, He gets so angry about which hole a man’s penis enters that he sends natural disasters to slaughter and dispossess the wicked—tens or hundreds of thousands them at a go.

Actually, that last paragraph gives those “arguments” all the attention they deserve, so I’ll say they’ve been addressed.

The only argument against marriage equality that has any business in the public discourse (and this just barely) is the ongoing struggle to define marriage as either a religious consecration, out of the scope of human legislation; or as a public, federally endorsed institution, with all of the benefits suggested by such an institution.

If our government is going to continue to endorse your religious marriage, they must also endorse non-religious marriages or they are making laws with respect to the establishment of religion.  It's not something to be "avoided", it's something that would have to be undone.  Keep in mind, if we take the government out of marriage, then all of the currently married people get no government perks whatsoever; no health care for your spouse, no power of attorney, no tax incentives--until you go back to the J.P. and get a Civil Union.

Making laws with respect to the establishment of religion is nothing new to our government, to say nothing of the regular assaults to other promises of the Bill of Rights.  Churches are tax-exempt organizations, even though they all qualify as non-profits whether or not they engage in charity work.  In addition, the current ban on marriage equality is a clear failure of our legal and political culture to execute the very First Amendment of our much vaunted Constitution.

I see nothing in that unfortunate truth to suggest that these abuses, this happy marriage of Church and State, should be allowed to continue.

A favorite argument of the conservative Christians I’ve “discussed” this issue with is to posit a moral equivalence between two men or two women getting married to each other, and: a 40-year-old man marrying a 12-year-old girl; men and women marrying non-human animals; people marrying inanimate objects, and anything I’ve left out that’s on their slippery slope.  This is because conservatives have a hard time understanding the idea of consent, as can be further evidenced in the Catholic Church’s sustained, vigorous defense of a growing cadre of “holy” men.

Gay marriage does not lead to pedophilia.  You know what leads to pedophilia? The Catholic Priesthood.  Those of us who don't like euphemisms in these situations call it child rape.

"Where do you draw the line on what can be defined as Marriage?"  This is another popular question I’ve received or witnessed in multiple long discussions on the topic.  I’ve got plenty of ideas there, but I think most progressives agree that it’s certainly not a line derived from the Bible, and emphatically not from Tradition.  Tradition is the enemy of progress, and in America, for the last 230+ years, progress always wins.  In the final analysis, progress is what the vast majority of Americans want, whether they call it by that name or not.

If the Church’s marriages are going to be recognized in any way by the U.S. Government, then Clergy should absolutely be forced to marry whomever the Government deems eligible.  My tax dollars currently endorse marriage discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs, and that is unacceptable to me, and hopefully, to any taxpayer who believes in the separation of Church and State.  We’ll know we’ve won this fight when the Department of Justice begins to prosecute Clergy who refuse to comply with the law.  Of course, we can’t even seem to put child-rapists in prison when they perpetrate their crimes while wearing a white collar, so we have a long way to go on that front.

Marriage has not been an exclusively religious rite for more than 50 years in this country, and the collective conclusions and statements of the very religious parrot the words of the "tolerant Christians" from the 1950s who "just weren't ready" for interracial marriage.

The believers and faithful of this country may not be ready for marriage equality, but that's going to have precisely zero effect on the end product. Progress is going to happen.  In this case, the objections of those who wish to further entwine Church and State (despite their claims they want the opposite, as evidenced by exactly none of them offering to give up their civil perks for the sake of their "religious" partnership) will be remembered as shameful--just as the fight against interracial marriage is remembered now.

Additionally, what people are “ready for” has no bearing on what is Just.  It has no place in legislation regarding what people do with their own lives.  There is no harm you can point to; no threat to anything you do in your own life other than raising hateful protest signs.  Your readiness is not our concern. 

The South wasn’t ready to give up slavery; they were forced into ignoring Biblical morality at the point of a gun.  Thankfully, the vast majority of our citizens would not like to see a repeat; hence we have hashed out our issues in Congress—a much better method, I hope you’ll agree.  The issue of marriage equality is playing out in the same fashion, and I have every faith that the level of violence it would normally take to accomplish a large push in Civil Rights will be nowhere in sight. 

Okay, maybe not “every faith”, but one can hope.

The Catholic Church changes it’s doctrine and it's dogma on the regular.  This is well-known.  They modify and sometimes bowdlerize previous "deeply held convictions" and "Biblical wisdom" to better reflect modern values, and thus gain/stop losing adherents.  They’re cynical like that.  It’s a big tent religion, that Christianity, but only when it suits the needs of dogmatic adherence. 

Marriage, in the Bible, is defined as a rite between a man and a woman. 

Also, a bride who cannot prove her virginity is to be stoned to death (Genesis 2:24). 

Also, concubines fit the definition of traditional marriage, as condoned in the stories of the lives of Abraham, Gideon, Nahor, Jacob, Eliphaz, Caleb, Manassah, Solomon, and Belshazzar. 

Also, the man gets the woman’s property (Genesis 16); Ploygany (one man, many wives) is encouraged; a widow who has not born a son—not just any child, but a son, mind you—is required to marry her brother-in-law or any eligible man who steps forward (Genesis 38:6-10); a virgin who is raped must marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-9); and, just for icing, the virgin daughters of the losers of war must marry the soldiers of the occupying force (Numbers 31:1-18; Deuteronomy 21:11-14).

Oops.

Why do you reject all of these other Biblical instructions for marriage, but accept the only instruction that supports your argument?

If all of these stories and instructions are somehow “just analogies”, where does that leave your Biblical definition of marriage?  You can’t have it both ways; either all of these conditions apply, per Biblical literalism; or none of them apply, per “the Bible is full of stories and metaphor.”  At the very least, that decision has to be made for the books of the Bible in which marriage is mentioned.

I suspect that, like most modern Christians, you recognize that the Bible contains some very outmoded passages, written by some fusty old folks who had nothing but barbaric, Bronze Age morals to guide them.  Why not extend the same courtesy to your gay friends and family by recognizing that the whole "gays are an abomination unto..." bit in Leviticus (a book of much angry, violent, "holy" rape and genocide; a book that modern American Christians ignore completely until it comes to homosexuality) is actually just another cock-eyed, old-timey, amoral, superstitious passage written by fallible men?

Leviticus is chock-full of instructions from God, instructions which in today's society can only be thought of as evil; laws requiring stoning as a punishment for people who wear synthetic fibers; instructions to male adherents that women should not be allowed to acquire knowledge.

Christa and I got married in a greenhouse by a friend of ours who bought his marriage license on the Internet.  The only part of our marriage that would look anything like a "religiously based" or "traditional" partnership is the fact that we are opposite-gendered.  The good Reverend Josh S. read the words of Khalil Gibran before marrying us, at our request.  Christa did not take my last name, and she has a PhD in science.  Her dress was purple, and had very few natural fibers in it.  Also, don't tell her I mentioned this, but she wasn't a virgin before our wedding night. God must be real pissed off.

But also, so much for the "war on traditional marriage".  We still get to be called "married" by the State, and enjoy all the same of the aforementioned civil perks that being married affords us.  Does that make you want to argue that we are trying to re-define marriage?

If your definition of marriage still mandates that the union of one man and one woman is the only true marriage, then I have bad news for you: you are the person trying to re-define marriage.

The word "marriage" and the tradition of Marriage may have originated in religion (and that is cause for much debate among social anthropologists), but that hasn't been what it's meant in a long time. Things change, whether we want them to or not--only in this case, most Americans want it to.

Why not be desirous of freedom and equality for your gay friends and family, rather than absolute consistency on the public definition of Marriage?  This is isn't the end of religious autonomy in America, it's just an acknowledgement that something we value very deeply isn't what it used to be; that we've being denying people their equal rights because of some very old words in a very old religious text.  That exact thing happens to be 100% illegal and unconstitutional.  

Religious rites which bestow civil benefits must be extended to all Americans, regardless of the religion's opinion about which Americans they should be excluding from their rites.  You're free to say, "It's not a right, it's a privilege" all day; you're still missing the point that within religion, marriage is still seen as a privilege--but to civil society, and to the government, marriage is absolutely considered a right, and has been since before we were born.  The Bill of Rights are not the only rights afforded to Americans.

Finally, I would like to address the concept of “homophobia”.  This accusation is lobbed at the opposition all the time, and I think the opposition should know why.

Homophobia does not imply hatred of gay people—just fear of them.  Phobia.

And yes, myself and everyone I know that is a part of the marriage equality movement thinks that every single person who is even remotely against gay marriage has got to be at least a little bit afraid of the gays.

Homophobia: Emotion, not reason.  Panic, not grace.  Fear, not piousness. That's what it looks like to us, even when you are making well-fashioned arguments and not losing your cool.

"We ignore what the Bible says about slavery, because the Bible got slavery wrong...if the Bible has got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong, what are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent."

-Dan Savage

"Everybody knows that."

My friend Sean Chilson and I were Facebitching about the fact that Ithaca contains a few unpleasant surprises for the wide-eyed newcomer.  When you bring these up with locals, you are routinely buffeted with the same response: "Everybody knows that."

Well, if that's true, then the kind thing to do would be for the Chamber of Commerce--or whomever would be responsible for such a thing--to put together a list, post it on the city's official website, offer free paper copies at the post office, and maybe even force the shitheads who are still distributing phonebooks--in East Hippie-stan, in 2012--to stuff a copy of it into their stupid ten-pound delivery of wasted paper.

I humbly submit this list of ten items for their consideration:

Ten Things You Should Know Before Moving To Ithaca

1. Only drunk Ithaca College students and homeless people eat at Sammy's.  Everyone else knows better.

2. Ithaca used to be the most hip, happening place in the East, but then it grew up.  It is now a progressive-agrarian enclave of blue-collar tree-huggers, some of whom have become so antagonistic to the world outside of Ithaca that they call themselves Libertarians.  Get over it.

3. Medical services in Ithaca are easy to locate, but very difficult to get treatment from.  Once you do, you'll find that doctors, nurses, and administrative assistants who can see each other's offices across the street are all apparently incapable of exchanging any info at all about their patients to one another. This is not because they are incompetent, but because they are not used to patients showing up for repeat visits, as most resort to full-spectrum, ayurvedic homeopathy when their PA fails to administer side effect-free, magical healing powers.

4. Ithaca really is gorges.

5. Cornell is in a different city--an island unto itself within Ithaca--called Collegetown. The whole situation is very similar to The Vatican's autonomy in Rome. Pay no attention to lexicographers or public officials who claim otherwise.

6. Locals think the dining scene is first-rate. In reality, there are six or seven Thai restaurants in Ithaca, and everyone thinks only one is any good.  Every Ithacan will name a different restaurant. The last one you eat at will be the only one you find remotely tolerable. This is the standard for any type of cuisine you care to name, including pizza.  Yes, you are still in the state of New York.

7. The Commons:
         
          A. It is illegal to smoke cigarettes on the pedestrian mall when the sun is up, and you will be ticketed if you are caught; but at night, if you see a drunk d-bag pissing on a bench you often like to sit on, and you tap him on the shoulder to ask him to stop, and when he turns to address you he starts puking, but he was still pissing, so now he's puking and pissing on you, and probably trying to use you for physical support, then any cops in sight will point and laugh.
         
          B. When the man in the top hat asks if you would "like to see some magic", the correct answer is "No".
         
          C. There is a skinny man with dreadlocks who often wears neon leotards and shouts at himself in a high-pitched voice.  He is there year-round.  Do not ask him what is wrong.
         
          D. The staff at the Commons Market are special/awesome (and no, that's not a euphemism for "intellectually disabled").  Be nice to them, and they will reward you.

8. You will find stop signs, stoplights, and pedestrian crossings at the same kinds of intersections you would in almost any American town, but the principles that govern how they work are the complete opposite of anywhere else you've been.  If you get confused trying to figure out what we mean by that, don't worry; you'll understand soon.

9. The quickest way to die in Ithaca is to say out loud, in a crowded room, that you're not sure hydraulic fracturing is all bad.

10. If you read this list, then move here and act like you know everything, Ithacans will know that you are only working off of this list, and still treat you like a newcomer.

Welcome to Ithaca!  Good Luck!

...but you have to name me as a co-founder.

A list of non-profit organizations that someone needs to start up.  And by "someone", I specifically mean, "someone else".  However, I would enthusiastically promote, with every mean I possess, any message produced by any one of the following agencies:

Partnership for a "Partnership for a Drug-Free America"-Free America

Mission Statement:  "To eradicate the flow of funding to, and middle-class American respect for, the most hypocritical, irrational, and draconian message machine still able to afford prime-time television advertising."

Seriously, someone needs to stop these fucking people.  See here:

"PDFA was the subject of criticism when it was revealed by Cynthia Cotts of the Village Voice that their federal tax returns showed that they had received several million dollars worth of funding from major pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol corporations including American Brands (Jim Beam whiskey), Philip Morris (Marlboro and Virginia Slims cigarettes, Miller beer), Anheuser Busch(Budweiser, Michelob, Busch beer), R.J. Reynolds (Camel, Salem, Winston cigarettes), as well as pharmaceutical firms Bristol Meyers-Squibb, Merck & Company and Procter & Gamble. From 1997 it has discontinued any direct fiscal association with tobacco and alcohol suppliers, although it still receives donations from pharmaceutical companies^[2]"

Sure, Wikipedia is full of errors.  Full of 'em.

Also, marijuana is gaining serious traction as a pharmaceutical and there are now dispensaries in goddamned Michigan, where even the hippies have NRA cards, so shut the fuck up already.

Progressives for Palin

Mission Statement:  "To help ensure the nomination of Sarah Palin to the 2012 Republican Presidential candidacy."

With an Obama re-election looking to be increasingly in the bag, the time is ripe to lay the foundation for a bit of unpopular, divisive, back-handed "insurance".  The nomination of Sarah Palin for the GOP Prez canididacy would seal an Obama victory in 2012.

Better yet, a failed attempt at said nomination could result in the most debilitating third-party spoiler in American history.

What seals the deal for me is the fact that, in relation to the the Democratic party I was raised to vote for, Obama is squarely a Republican.  If you actually want a balanced ballot, you have to put a charismatic, infantile, fascistic, wasp-y, soccer mom-type (because, it could just as easily be a man, you know) in the open spot. Go Sarah!

People for the Ethical Treatment of Spiders (PETS)

Mission Statement: "To stop the spread of vile and baseless slander aimed at the stealthy and majestic Arachnid, overlooked friend of Homo Habilis."

Okay, no; I too have no special wish to keep a spider as a pet.  However, my lovely squealers, they have been misunderstood most heinously.  Please do not step on, smash, or otherwise offend the next tiny janitor you see.  Give 'em a ride out the door, if you must.

Janitor, you ask?  Well:

Exhibit 'A': They motherfucking eat cockroaches.  'A(1)': And all the other ugly, sideways, oblique-wiggle bitches that like to run over your toes in bathroom and remind your half-awake ass of every nasty bug-based horror movie with a freaky shower scene in it your brother ever made you watch.  TOTALLY ruins the full-frontal female nudity.  Totally. Ruins. It.

Exhibit 'B': That shit your drunk cousin's drunk-ass wife told everyone else's drunk ass at the Thanksgiving table about how many spiders the average person eats while they're asleep is pure urban fucking myth.  The stealthy and majestic arachnid wishes nothing to do with your sticky, smelly volcano hole.  It's fully fucking aware that that shit is a putrid slime-slide straight to your intenstines, even if you've conveniently forgotten that little detail.

If you think I'm talking out of my ass, then you'd better sleep with a fucking clothespin on your flappers, mouth-breather.  Who the fuck BELIEVES they swallow spiders at night, and doesn't do a goddamn thing about it?  Seriously, seek professional assistance.

Exhibit 'C': The number of reported envenemation from dangerous spiders in the U.S. is already extremely low, but it turns out that EIGHTY PERCENT of the most common reports (those involving the Brown Recluse and some form of "necrosis") are probably misdiagnosed.

Spoiler!: these folks all maybe have eczema, or psoriasis.

But, you know.  If the majestic arachnid in YOUR house is a poisonous man-killer, then yeah, eliminate that motherfucker.

Fun With iWeb

iWeb is, you guessed it, a blog-designing app for Leopard users.  It comes with some pretty silly designs and/or stock photos.  I decided to have a little fun with it.  My favorite thing about this gag is the "Made on a Mac" logo on some of the pages.  An un-greeked sampling:

Why Do We Create?

As a straight, white, American male, I feel a strong obligation to consume as little as possible, for the rest of my life; to exert as minimal an influence on the world as I can. I’m not alone in this pursuit; my generation contains a modest but significant percentage of latter-day guilty liberals.  That is, we are all convinced that tens of thousands of years of male-dominated culture has sent humanity careening towards its demise.  And we don’t get together and talk about it, despite what you might have heard about the sudden prevalence of co-ed knitting circles.

The end of the world—yes, this we discuss—just not the fact that it’s our fault. That sentiment, spoken aloud in a group setting, would necessarily bring all other political conversation to a halt.

Humanity is predictable, destructive, and probably not deserving of salvation.  Of course, life isn’t about 'deserve', everybody knows that.  But but but.  If why we try so hard to save ourselves is nothing more than a (very strong) genetic impulse, how can there ever be any art in it?  People create art, but life is itself artless.  And don’t you cough up that dust-bunny of a cliché: “Living well is an art”.  Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  Too bad it isn’t true—at least, not as an axiom. It should be: “If you’re lucky, living well can be an art”.  'Living well' is a combination of good luck and brain chemistry.  If you strike the words “good” and “well” from that sentence, that’s life, in a nutshell, for every creature that has ever lived.

Given that one accepts some approximation of my statements as true—maybe you’re a little more hopeful, or confident than I am, but still not quite married to the idea that people have 100% control over their personal fortunes and failures—how are we to go on creating as artists?  If the art we create, at best, embellishes a neutral existence, why do we work so hard to nail it to the walls? How can we continue to hang the drapes when the house is crumbling around us?

In the words of Melvin Udall, “People who speak in metaphors oughta shampoo my crotch.”

Really, I don’t care.  I mean, I care that there's at least a bit of suck in everything, in as much as that knowledge doesn’t make things in my life suck any less.  And, I’d much rather that nothing sucked for anyone, ever.  But I try not to waste time caring (too much) about whether or not my art is having a positive impact on culture, or on the world.  The single most influential cultural artifact ever, if such a thing exists, will eventually crumble and be forgotten in the face of the quintessentially impersonal and infinite physics of the universe.  (I can hear Werner Herzog’s voice-over for this scene: “Ze greatest accomplishments of man vill be as meaningless as dust in ze cold dahkness of ze void.”)

I make art because making art gives me pleasure.  It’s an emotional bonus—and potentially a financial one, so I’m told—if the art I make pleases others, too.

Also, because I do possess a sense of ethics, I try really hard not to hurt anyone with my art—even though if I do, they probably deserve it, & esp. even though many famous writers have made their names by systematically dissecting other people and pinning up their entrails, in an artistic medium tantamount to public forum.

I bring all of this up because I am currently writing a torturous short piece about my family (with all of the names changed, including my own).  To clarify for my acquaintances: this is a story about the side of my family that I am deliberately out of contact with.  It is torturous for me to write this story because it deals with a personal psychology which I have been running away from ever since I figured out that running was the thing to do in the face of this beast—modern psychology be damned.   I am putting up with this torture because I realized that the details of a certain especially painful two weeks of my life could make for an interesting tale.  However, it will also be torturous for a member or two of my family (if it ever sees the light of day), since it was written specifically to create the artistic spectacle of a practiced writer skewering subjects he is unfairly familiar with.

You may notice the faint whiff of guilt emanating from that last sentence.  I am “skewering”, and it’s “unfair”.  Now, it’s true that I am remembering and writing these experiences through a biased, dark lens, and that I wince a little when I think of how upset one particular person would be if she ever read this story.  She wouldn’t care who else had read it, she would just be very hurt to find out what I really think of her.  Maybe.  But, I still might only find it to be unfair in the artistic sense; in other words, I did not create this story, this very engaging story, out of whole cloth—I have, for the most part, been cataloguing (rather accurately, I like to think) the past actions of myself and other people.

Well, and this isn’t entirely true, either.  My creativity, the fact that I am creating, is evident in the way I tell the story—not just the minor fictionalizations and embellishments, but the tone, the themes, the signature of my style all indicate that there is a unique, biased personality speaking.  It’s a tale—meant to amuse, to depress, to argue—to create emotion, if possible—rather than a mere document, meant only to inform.  So, it isn’t artistically unfair as a whole, unless I market it as fiction.  

I am, in fact, going to market the story as fiction.  One reason for this is that I would like to cause less damage.  Less, not 'as little as possible'; for that, I would have to publish under a pseudonym.  I have considered this option, and rejected it.  Bad for my writing career.  Besides, my full name has that great, stentorian, 'Writer' thing going for it.  Daniel Thomas Boucher.  See?

Despite my guilt, and despite the fact that I may indeed hurt a sort-of family member with this piece of art, I’m plowing ahead.  The story’s almost complete, and I’m going to try really, really, hard to get it published. 

What, did you think I’d relive one of the worst traumas of my adulthood just for kicks?

Here’s the thing: people may find that the filthy muck of your regrets is quite interesting, if you know how to write about it (and I’m still not sure that I do).  It is a rare gift—and I mean “gift” in the strictest sense: egoless, unearned—to be able to view your own past objectively enough to pick out the bits that are interesting to the average reader.  Great emotional turmoil can make for exceptional art; examples of this are so abounding that I didn’t even have to refer to them just then, because you already agree with me.  However, simply relating every aspect of a specific turmoil you’ve suffered through is not art—it’s whining.  If you can capture misery in an interesting way, without whining about it, you have the potential to entertain millions.

However, I don’t believe the genesis of our fascination with other’s problems is simply that “misery loves company”, or that it feels good to know others have it worse than you—except maybe when it comes to the way misery is filleted, grilled, and served on a paper plate to daytime talk show audiences.  I actually think it has a lot more to do with the fact that our difficulties highlight our differences; sometimes, yes, we see the kinds of differences that keep us lobbing (actual, and figurative) missiles at each other; at other times, we may see the differences we like, the ones that make us uniquely, quirkily human.  We like to re-assure ourselves that we matter, that we have an effect on the world. One (good?) way to accomplish this is to outline the boundaries that keep us separated.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not writing this pained, humorlessly dysfunctional family story as a favor to my readers—not that I have readers to do favors for.  I am not implying that my short fiction will change your perspective on humanity.  In fact, I am not even claiming that my artistic contribution in any way excuses me from launching a very emotional, and potentially very public assault on certain members of my family, including one who isn’t even around to defend himself.

I freely admit my guilt.  Je regrette rien!.  If my primary concern was not to hurt anyone, I would take the story in progress as a healthy bit of therapy, give it a tidy ending, and leave it on my flash drive to read over from time to time.  Unfortunately, when it comes to creating, whom I might be hurting is not my primary concern.  Without putting too much thought into it, I feel like it comes fifth or sixth, after word-craft, thematic cohesion, believability, voice, and marketability.  I guess it would depend on who I thought might get hurt.

I have no problems sleeping at night after making art like this, as long as I’ve been writing for the sake of writing, rather than for revenge, or justice, or…you get the drift.  The jury's still out on whether I'll have problems sleeping if my careless, hurtful words ever result in a paycheck.

Notice that I am not making off with a valid moral point like a thief in the night by claiming that art doesn’t really hurt anybody.  'Sticks and stones'?  That childhood rhyme pisses me off, when I think about it now.  Was it our parents that brainwashed us with that hooey?  Helooooo, Gen X?  Did our parents’ parents say that to them, too?  It’s total crap, people.  Words can totally be used as weapons, especially when you know your target’s weak spots.

If you know that Melinda is sensitive about her weight, and you start addressing her as “fat-ass”, you don’t get to claim that she’s responsible for feeling hurt by your insensitivity.  It’s true that a person can, with training, learn to “ignore” negative speech directed at them, but that doesn’t change the fact that you struck, with intent to harm.  This would be roughly analogous to shooting someone in the chest and then blaming them for dying because they didn’t know enough to wear a Kevlar vest when standing near you.  Still—there will always be those who claim that you’ve spilled blood, when you’ve done nothing more than share your thoughts.

I’m also not making the argument that the end justifies the means; the one universal attribute every fictional villain seems to share is that they believe that ends justify means.  People tend to think of that as ‘evil’, and I am no exception.  I’m not saying that it’s okay to hurt people, because "Hey, you didn't mean to, and at least you’ve created art".  Even the most seemingly innocuous thing can hurt someone if you do it enough; and even if artfulness won’t necessarily guarantee that you live well, it can at least help you to be more deliberte--more aware of what effect you have on others.

In any case, if I worried about who I might be hurting every time I wrote a story, I would never be able to write a story again.  The same goes for you, if you replace “write a story” with the appropriate verb and noun for whatever artistic outlet you pursue.   This was Dave Chappelle’s stated reason for retiring prematurely.  He thought his art was propagating racial stereotypes.  He was worried about hurting people.  His audience, as you probably know already, disagreed.

And that, I think, is why they call it 'art'.  'Entertainment' is something you engage in when there’s extra time, but art is the seemingly frivolous thing you make time for, no matter what’s going on.  Even, sometimes, if it has a chance of hurting someone (and it almost always does).  Even if you think the world is ending.  A dying civilization has more need for art than any other.  

A vibrant society needs art, too, for those of you who are still not on board with the whole 'decay' thing.

Because, of course: art is not frivolous, in and of itself (it can be, if that’s what you’re aiming for).  Creating art connects you to the people around you, sometimes in ways that you didn’t want, or weren’t expecting it to.  It teaches you who you are, and how you see the world.  If you think you already know how you see the world, and that I’m being presumptuous, or that I’m pretentious to suggest otherwise, all I can say is that I hope that you will spend some years of your life creating.  If you do, you may find that your impressions of the only world you’ve ever known are decidedly more byzantine, more vibrant, and more nuanced than you had thought.  You may find that single-minded dedication to creating something you intend to share with others will deepen your insight, give your experiences more relevance, make life taste different.

I can’t promise it’s a taste you’ll enjoy. 

I hope you’ll do it anyway.  Make something.  Add something refreshingly human to the world, instead of (just) waiting to be carried away by the cultural and political crap-tornado that everyone seems to be perpetually bracing themselves for.  

I, for one, will be better off for your efforts—even if they hurt.

B.O.A.T. list

Well, here it is, my list of the Best albums Of All Time.  I narrowed it down to 75. I've re-done the whole thing since my iPod decided not to let me listen to my music temporarily, and I had to reset it. And yes, I ended up with 75 again.

When picking these albums out, I decided on a definition of "best" that bows to the subjectiveness of that idea: I could add anything to the list that I either thought was one of the "the best" or simply "my favorite".  A few albums that were "my favorite" but not necessarily "the best" were left off of the list, mostly because 75 is a nice number.

Also, for those who remember the previous list, I've chosen to follow some more stringent rules for this one in the name of eclecticism, namely:
1. only one album per artist
2. one "disc" per multi-"disc" album, and
3. as before, "best of" and "live" compilations are allowed in lieu of studio albums.

I am looking forward to your shocked claims of exclusion.

In "iTunes alphabetical" order by artist:

Andrew Bird, “The Mysterious Production of Eggs”

Animal Collective, “Feels”

Apostle of Hustle, “National Anthem of Nowhere”

Arcade Fire, “Funeral”

The Beastie Boys, “Paul’s Boutique”

The Beatles, “Revolver”

Beck, “Mutations”

Bjork, “Post”

Black Flag, “Damaged”

Blur, “Blur”

Bob Dylan, “Blood on the Tracks”

Broken Social Scene, “Broken Social Scene”

Cat Stevens, “Tea For The Tillerman”

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah”

The Clash, “London Calling”

The Cure, “Staring At The Sea”

Daft Punk, “Homework”

David Bowie, “Ziggy Stardust”

The Decemberists, “Her Majesty The Decemberists”

Dirty Projectors, “Bitte Orca”

The Fiery Furnaces, “Gallowsbird’s Bark”

The Flaming Lips, “The Soft Bulletin”

Grizzly Bear, “Veckatimest”

Guided by Voices, “Human Amusements at Hourly Rates”

Iron & Wine, “Our Endless Numbered Days”

The Jam, “The Sound of The Jam”

Joy Division, “Closer”

LCD Soundsystem, “Sound of Silver”

Les Savy Fav, “Inches”

Lou Reed, “Transformer”

The Magnetic Fields, “69 Love Songs” (Disc 1)

Mclusky, “Mclusky Do Dallas”

Michael Jackson, “Thriller”

Modest Mouse, “The Lonesome Crowded West”

Neko Case, “Middle Cyclone”

Neutral Milk Hotel, “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”

Nirvana, “In Utero”

Of Montreal, “Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?”

Operation Ivy, “Energy”

Os Mutantes, “Everything Is Possible”

Paul Simon, “Graceland”

Pavement, “Wowee Zowee”

Pink Floyd, “Dark Side of the Moon”

Pixies, “Doolittle”

Police, “Greatest Hits”

The Postal Service, “Give Up”

Public Enemy, “Fear of a Black Planet”

Pulp, “Different Class”

R.E.M., “Reckoning”

Radiohead, “In Rainbows”

Robyn Hitchcock, “Storefront Hitchcock”

Silver Jews, “American Water”

Sonic Youth, “Dirty”

Spoon, “Girls Can Tell”

Squeeze, “Singles, 45s, and Under”

Stereolab, “Emperor Tomato Ketchup”

Stevie Wonder, “Innervisions”

The Strokes, “Is This It?”

Sufjan Stevens, “Illinoise”

Talking Heads, “The Name of This Band is Talking Heads”

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, “Hearts of Oak”

Television, “Marquee Moon”

Tom Waits, “Mule Variations”

Tune-Yards, “Bird-Brains”

U2, “Achtung Baby”

Vampire Weekend, “Vampire Weekend”

Van Morrison, “Astral Weeks”

Velvet Underground, “VU & Nico”

Violent Femmes, “Violent Femmes”

Weezer, “Pinkerton”

The White Stripes, “Elephant”

Wilco, “Summerteeth”

The Wrens, “The Meadowlands”

XTC, “Drums and Wires”

Yo La Tengo, “I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One”

As a special "bonus" for anyone caring enough to read this far, here is another list.  This is a playlist I made to demonstrate how Blur owes a huge artistic debt to XTC.  It's organized in pairs of songs which sound alike to me.  In each case, the Blur song comes first, the better to notice the similarities when you hear the antecedent.

1. Blur, Stereotypes, from "The Great Escape"
2. XTC, Respectable Street, from "Black Sea"
3. Blur, Pressure on Julian, from "Modern Life is Rubbish"
4. XTC, Making Plans For Nigel, from "Drums and Wires"
5. Blur, Jubilee, from "Parklife"
6. XTC, Battery Brides (Andy Paints Brian), from "Go 2"
7. Blur, Theme From Retro, from "Blur"
8. XTC, Life is Good in the Greenhouse, from "Go 2"
9. Blur, Tracy Jacks, from "Parklife"
10. XTC, Love At First Sight, from "Black Sea"
11. Blur, Chinese Bombs, from "Blur"
12. XTC, Cross Wires, from "White Music"

The list only has 12 items right now because  I am still working on it. As I hear new connections during casual iPod listening, I will add them.  Suggestions are welcome, lol.

Another Rat Eulogy.

R.I.P. Lawrence, 2008-2010. We hoped he would live forever, but it was not to be. Lars was our dearest (and longest-lived) ratty, and we are both really, really bummed out right now. Incidentally, at more than 2 years old, Lawrence was an old man--rats rarely ever make it to age 3.  Here are some pictures, plus a video full of ridiculous cuteness. It's worth watching to the end of the video to see what begging for banana looks like. Also, check out my previous rat eulogy here for my general sentiment about why rats are great pets, plus some more ridiculously cute pictures.

Venn Diagram #3

America, take a hint from Thailand and stop trying to grill your tofu.

Click on my diagram to go and vote on it at graphjam.com!

DRIFT's Premature Top Ten Albums of the Year.

Well, it's about that time of year when, due to a certain holiday and it's traditions and "music", I like to put on a metaphorical blindfold and pretend that none of it is happening. As far as I'm concerned, 2010 is already here, so I might as well share with you what I feel have been the best albums of 2009.

Sure, you could just wade through Pitchfork's top 5 gazillion albums of the millenium, and my ten would probably be floating around in there somewhere, but here at DRIFT, I skip over all of the albums that are merely pretty damn good just to share with you the ones I felt were exceptional.  SPOILER ALERT! The top 4 blew my mind.

As a qualifier, I selected these albums from the 70 or so I have listened to this year and enjoyed enough to keep on my increasingly cramped iPod.

If you live in Chicago, and we're friends, and you ask nicely, I might just burn a copy of some of these albums for you, if you're in need of said copies. So, one could almost think of this seemingly pointless and psychologically predictable list as "useful", in a sense, if one were so inclined.

#10:
St. Vincent, "Actor"

Annie Clark, late of The Polyphonic Spree (unfortunately) and Sufjan Stevens' touring band (impressively), released this mostly solo album in May. In June, she performed a stunning set for Austin City Limits, the producers of which chose to air her set in the same hour as the notoriously awe-inspiring comfort food music of Andrew Bird and his newly formed "band".  This is arguably the best hour of ACL ever aired--I would even put it above the Arcade Fire's barn-burner taping from last year. St. Vincent's music ranges from breathing fresh life into the oft-strained cliche of violin-weeping-through-electronic-fuzz indie rock ballad to the simultaneously beautiful and nerve-wracking anxiety of rhythm-driven songs like "Marrow".

#9:
Dan Deacon, "Bromst"

It would have been easier just to dismiss Dan Deacon as a sonic nutcase back in 2007, when several years of toil in the Baltimore electronic music scene birthed "Spiderman of the Rings", a cacophony of synthesized instrumentation, beeps, warbles, and an endless stream of seemingly misplaced triplets, with the occasional confusing and unintelligible vocal track thrown in for good measure.  Sure, it would've been easier just to call it a noisy, confusing mess and have done with it.  But then I would've missed out on the artful tapestry which Deacon manages to fabricate from that mess--swirling, vibrating compositions that more than hold up to repeated plays and reward the patient listener with a new musical lexicon. I also would've missed "Bromst", the album which somehow manages to do "Spiderman" one better.

#8:
Future of the Left, "Travels With Myself and Another"

"I've been here once or twice before with better hair, and let me tell you/ Only the good die young, except for when they don't, it's not exactly fair."  So ends the highly amusing quasi-existentialist track "Stand By Your Manatee" from the new-ish project of former McLusky frontman Andy "Falco" Falkous. Those familiar with the punk-ish stylings of the now defunct Welsh outfit will recognize humorous existentialism as Falco's stock-in-trade.  He delivers maniacal faux-egotism with an expertise that would make Rasputin proud. The music on "Travels" is a welcome departure from the moody and under-fleshed compositions of FOTL's debut offering, "Curses".  It's okay to sound more like McLusky, Falco--don't forget, everyone loved McLusky. And by "everyone", of course, I mean "critics", since the American public wasn't really paying attention. And on the billion-to-one chance you end up reading this, you scare the living shit out of me, and I apologize for saying bad things about "Curses". Please don't hurt me.

#7:
Various Artists, "Dark Was The Night"

The latest offering from the folks at Red Hot (of "No Alternative" fame) contains 2 discs worth of brooding, drawn-out art rock, as the title implies. Proceeds from the sale of every Red Hot album go directly to help fund AIDS research, outreach, and awareness campaigns.  If that isn't enough to convince you to buy the album, you should know that this is a compilation which contains: collaboratory songs by The Dirty Projectors & David Byrne, Feist & Ben Gibbard (NOT the "Mushaboom" remix), Feist & Grizzly Bear, Cat Power & The Dirty Delta Blues, and Andrew Bird & The Handsome Family. You will also find:  The darkest Sufjan Stevens song ever ("You Are The Blood"), a hip-hop remake of the darkest Sufjan Stevens song ever (Blood, pt. 2), an upbeat Arcade Fire song ("Lenin"), a Nick Drake cover by The Books & Jose Gonzalez ("Cello Song"), and a song by Kevin Drew titled "Love vs. Porn". If you're anything like me, you reflexively purchased this album halfway through that list.  Congrats to you, it's the best compilation of the year.

#6:
The Flaming Lips, "Embryonic"

Even if you are familiar with the freak-psychedelia of The Flaming Lips, you may find this album (and it's cover art) somewhat unsettling.  The Lips played a fairly predictable set at this year's Pitchfork Festival, cramming their Carnival Cruise Lines-meets-Cirque Du Soliel stage show into the measly 60 minutes afforded to each and every act at the 3-day event.  Add in Wayne Coyne's lengthy paeans to brotherly love, repeated chants of "C'mon, motherfuckers!", and the 10 minutes it took him to climb triumphantly out of a giant LCD vagina, and the most packed Pitchfork concert ever was treated to about 7 songs, plus a lot of giant balloons.  Everyone seemed happy about the giant balloons. What I noticed most, however, were the two new songs the Lips played from their as-yet unreleased album.  "Convinced Of The Hex" was rattling around in my brain for weeks before "Embryonic" was even leaked online--I could only rub my hands together in devilish anticipation of an album that might preserve the Lips musical maturtity while bringing back the edgy, frayed, electronic stylings from days of yore.  I was not disappointed, and if you're as big of a fan of "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart" as you are of "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots", you won't be disappointed, either.

#5
Animal Collective, "Merriweather Post Pavillion"

If you move your eyes back and forth across that album cover, you will see an effect that is roughly analogous to what I imagine Animal Collective is trying to do to your ears with their music. They're not for everyone--indeed, it took the passage of months and repeated listens of earlier albums "Feels" and "Sung Tongs" for me to even get a hold of AC's sonic thread.  The melodies are disjointed, the rhythms spastic at the best of times.  Like Dan Deacon, patience rewards the agile listener--"Feels" is easily one of the best albums of the decade.  "Merriweather" is a bit of a departure from form for the psuedonymed Baltimore trio (the members call themselves Panda Bear, Geologist, and Avery Tare), merging more easily accessible, pop-ier melodies with their trademark hyper-layered instrumentation.  It's an addictive formula, resulting in the undeniably catchy, snap-your-fingers-along track "My Girls", the didgeridoo-laced "Lion In A Coma", and the dream-like, lush ballad "Also Frightened".  It would be remiss for me not to mention that 2 of my close musical familiars (Hi Nate and Justin!) who introduced me to AC in the first place have roundly rejected this album as being either "frustrating" or "too pop-y".  Eh, what do they know?

#4:
Tune-Yards, "Bird-Brains"

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to see this album in my list--indeed perhaps you are right now stunned that I have not made it #1, as I have been ranting about it for weeks.  What's more inspiring than New England native Merrill Garbus recording these songs on a hand-held digital recorder over the course of two years, playing all of the instruments (drums, ukelele, keyboards) herself, mixing them on an open-source computer program, and then self-releasing, promoting, and booking the album before finally being signed by London indie-impresarios 4AD?  Well, how about the fantastic songs? Garbus loops her incredible, yodle-capable voice over itself to comprise the backing tracks for many of the songs, loops in an african rhythym-heavy drum track, and then plays equatorial/tropical melodies on her uke while belting out wise, knowing poetry ("What if my own skin makes my skin crawl?") with the enthusiasm of a child (she pulls all of this off live, too--quite a spectacle). The ebullient/funky track "Hatari" is the best example of this, injecting Swahili proverbs into an appropriately African-tinged, dance-'round-the-fire invocation to the indomitable human spirit.  As an added bonus, Garbus allows her emotion to carry her to melodic shouting at the song's climax of "Did you listen? Did you listen?" resulting in a level of visceral pleasure which this fan has not experienced since the Arcade Fire's "Funeral" (2004), which, as we all know, is tattooed on my freakin' forearm.

#3:
Grizzy Bear, "Veckatimest" 

Ah, Williamsburg.  Brooklyn, NYC, U.S.A.  Home of the American hispter, the art school snob, overpriced fad cuisine, and, for better or for worse, the creators of 2 of my top 3 albums of the year.  The boys of Grizzly Bear had already turned heads with their 2006 release "Yellow House", an album of dark, sparse indie-folk, squeezed through a filter of crumbling studio apartments and an aloof, ecstasy and alcohol-soaked aesthetic.  The internet word-of-mouth and possibly manufactured hype produced in the run-up to "Veckatimest" had most of the scenster prognosticators (Pitchfork, i'm looking at you!) surmising that it would never live up to the promise.  Oh boy, did they ever eat some crow.  Not only did "Veckatimest" manage to best it's predecessor, it did so by chucking out every hipster pretense of what great music is supposed to sound like--that is, by being compositionally meticulous, polished in production, and widely accessible.  I defy you to listen to "Two Weeks" and not be singing the wordless "ah-ah" refrain for the rest of the week--it simply can't be done.  Anyone approaching me to say that they did it gets a smack in the kisser.  See if I'm kidding.

#2:
Neko Case, "Middle Cyclone"

Who hasn't fallen completely head over heels for Neko Case in the last year?  Idiots, that's who. Her musical prowess is frankly too accomplished for me to comment on, and besides, it's very well documented.  Her lyrics slay anyone who hears them ("The next time you say 'forever'/ I will punch you in your face/ Just because you don't believe it/ Doesn't mean I didn't mean it." [!]), possibly with the aid of the frightening sword which she appears to be wielding so skillfully in that photo. And if you become enamored of her music and have the good fortune to see her perform in a venue seating no more than 1000 fans, you will melt, you will swoon, you may have a medical emergency.  Seriously, be careful. The storied and accomplished musicians who have hitched their wagons to her star have made a wise choice, indeed, and if you deny that she is anything less than a musical genius and benevolent enchantress of the first order, I will be forced to bash you over the head repeatedly with a copy of this album, like the drooling Neko zombie I have become.

#1:
Dirty Projectors, "Bitte Orca"

And, to no one's surprise, we find ourselves once again contemplating Williamsburg, where Dave Lonsgtreth and the myriad variations of his band Dirty Projectors have been toiling in semi-obscurity (which is to say, indie-rock superstardom) across 7 years, 6 studio albums, 5 labels, and 17 band members, past and present (the current incarnation involves 5 people other than Longstreth).  Call him hard to work with, call him a clinical perfectionist, call him stuck on difficult, experimental compositions--just don't call him boring, or he'll blast you with 4 bars of 5/4, each bar crammed with as many notes as can possibly be fit into the time signature.  Still, there is artfulness and beauty to be wrung out of these meticulously arranged rock acrobatics, and on "Bitte Orca", Longstreth et. al. have greased the wheels for popular enjoyment in a way that they never have before, and probably never will again. From the opening strains of the uber-catchy "Cannibal Resource", through the R&B-tinged "Stillness Is The Move", to the muzak-synth closing chords of "Flourescent Half-Dome",  and during the jaw-dropping vocal accomplishments of the female duo pictured on the album cover who round out everything in between, you will be entranced, tickled, and finally, amazed.  That is, if you ever manage to get over the initial cognitive impulse of "what the hell am I listening to?" which, unfortunately, may be your first response to a majority of the albums on this list.

Overused terms in this essay: "indie" (x4), "compostion" (x4), "accessible" (x3), "[genre] stylings of" (x2), "experimental" (x1).

Predictable concepts presented: "breathing fresh life into", "sonic tapestry", "hip-hop remake", "Williamsburg hipster".


UPDATE: I am proud to say that only 4 of my top ten fell in line with Pitchfork's.  Really? Bat For Lashes? Really? Whatevs, P4K.

Une Petite Videoblog au Paris.

Okay, bear with me.

By the time you read this, an album of photos from our trip to Paris is well on its way to being posted on Facebook.

Until then, check out a few videos I made--on my digital camera.

Yup, they're low quality, they're shaky, they're sub-amateur. But I want you to watch them, so there must be something to them, right?   RIGHT?

Well, at least they have audio.

First up, an exhibit at Musee des Arts et Metiers (Arts and Crafts), the kick-ass museum of imaginative technological advancement located about 1 Chicago block from our rented flat.  This is an animatronic clock (19th cent., I think) behind a pane of glass.  I pressed a glowing green button, and some imaginative technology projected a video onto the face of the clock, showing me (and now, you) how it would've moved.

I find the YouTube player works best if you let the video load completely before playing it:

Hopefully, you have a fast computer, and that video was "quirky".  If not, it was "choppy" and "unwatchable". Sorry.

Next up is a video from that same great museum of an object I've been wanting to see for years now, ever since reading a book by Umberto Eco called "Foucault's Pendulum". 

It's Foucault's Pendulum.

Yes, true, there are a handful of these scattered around the globe, I've already seen the one hanging next to the staircase--in some or other American museum. Christa, where was that again?

Anyhow, this is THE pendulum, the one Leon Foucault himself set up in 1851 to prove to the plebian naysayers of Paris that the Earth does indeed spin around an axis.  It was the first (!) empirical evidence of what everyone but Scientologists now know to be the truth about planetary rotation.  For those who don't know, here's how it works:

The (huge) pendulum is attached to a very long cable, which cable is drilled into a fixed point on the ceiling.  The pendulum is set swinging, while a huge glass compass just underneath it demonstrates to the observer that pendulum's angle of swing is changing very slowly, due to the rotation of the earth--that is to say, you are watching the Earth revolve around the swinging pendulum, which I think is fucking brilliant. (Click here for a more apt description of how this works).

In this video, Christa and I are waiting for the pendulum to hit a tiny metal target, which impact demonsrates the barely perceptible change in the pendulum's arc.  That's Christa talking to me near the end of the video:

Wow. So cool.

Okay, and finally, something that will totally seem pointless unless the video runs smoothly, in which case, IT'LL ROCK YOU.

Or not.  We took this great bike tour of much of Paris on Monday morning.  It was run by Fat Tire bike tours, which is an American company which conducts english-language bike tours.  We had some apprehension about an expensive guided tour, but it turned out to be so awesome that we took them up on their half-price offer for a NIGHT TOUR of Ile-de-la-Cite, in the heart of Paris.  This we did on the last night we were in town, and there were many amazing things about it, but the best part was when we jumped off of the bikes and got on a Seine river boat.  We got to chill on a boat for an hour, our tour guide was passing out vin rouge like it was going out of style (which will never, ever happen in Paris), and our wine-loosened tongues made for interesting chatter with some other english-speaking visitors.

Christa was watching the banks of Seine--I was too busy talking.  I did however, manage to get this video of the Eiffel Tower, an obvious landmark which we deliberately avoided for most of our trip. In 1999, the gov't of Paris decked out Le Tour for a top-secret unveiling on the eve of Y2K.  Everyone was so dazzled by this display that Paris decided to keep it, and now, after sundown, the Tower "sparkles" every hour, on the hour, for 5 minutes.

Again, I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to let the video finish "buffering" before playing, or this won't seem so impressive. The chatter is a combo of the automated "tour guide voice" on the boat, the other tourists, and me talking to myself, apparently:

The rest of the details from this trip will be hinted at in the (soon to be posted) photo captions, and related verbally in great detail when next I see the 6 of you who read this blog.

A bientot!