Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch was probably the last movie I thought I'd find on the new HULU.com. Admittedly it was a pretty terrible movie that actually made me dislike the book, which I had previously loved. Nothing could give me nightmares like Burroughs, truly the Sith Lord of the beat poets. 

Also available on HULU is Timerider, a movie co-written and scored by Mike Nesmith. I am actually surprised there hasn't been a remake of this one considering how heavily it depends on gadgets and technofabulous ca-ca to entertain. If you haven't seen it and don't care to, its Fred Ward accidentally riding a fancy motorcycle into the wild west era of history. Hijinks ensue.

I was excited about Hulu.com. Finally I could watch streaming movies legally and not the "videotaped in the theater then supercompressed for download" crap that gets, uh, sold in chinatown... but what I found instead was a lot of one star movies that sucked when they came out in the 80's and sucked again when they were on Cinemax and continued to suck in the video store. Don't get me wrong, I still watched them.

State of the....

I have been doing this minimalist act for a few years now and I have to say, its working pretty well. The most immediate benefit of hardly ever buying anything is all the savings. You are doing alright if you are not in crushing debt these days and every night that I come home and there is no repo men, constables or big guys with lead pipes at my door is a victory. The news is full of bad tidings for the American poor, as if for the first time in all of history it sucks to be poor. There have been boom times and recessions and despite what the rest of the world was doing I was barely getting by. Finally I figured out that a little forethought, some critical examination and resisting the reptilian urge to buy shiny things has saved me a few $$$$ over the last few years.

Fiscal health isn't the only benefit, now my house is clean. Not just clean, but the kind of clean that when I come home I can't remember it being this clean when I left. Everything is where it is supposed to be or else its just gone. I don't lose tools or pieces of paper in piles, there isn't hardly enough stuff to make a pile. Keeping with rigid new policy, that if an object isn't used once a year it has to be removed from my possession, I have sent many old hobbies on to the thrift store. Occasionally I regret this personal rule when I go looking for an item of former interest, but it passes. Another related benefit is being organized. I am a trustee for my condominium and neighbors are amazed that I have obscure records so readily at hand and sad that I literally threaten them if they suggest "borrowing" anything. 

Cleaner and wealthier I anticipated but one benefit I had not planned for was - more time. Having fewer clothes to launder and put away and fewer possessions that require parts and maintenance has freed up a surplus of time to read, spend with family or otherwise pursue leisure arts. I feel bad for my contemporaries who burden to keep up failing automobiles or struggle to maintain appearances. 

Let's be clear, minimalism isn't what I thought it would be when I first started doing it. I had this belief that I would live this pure way and set up hard rules for conduct that did not allow much room for bargaining; for example, no colors and no patterns are allowed. I did this because color forces mood whereas shades are interpreted only as depth. Crazy stuff, but that was what I needed. Discipline. Perspective, it turned out, was the very essence of minimalism. A minor shift in perspective made me inspect seams in garments and put back items that were overly processed or had too much packaging. I began to question life cycles, recyclability and even asked a bewildered clerk about phantom power consumption (she thought I was making it up). 

So what have been the drawbacks to minimalism? Well, so far its just me. I haven't converted a single person away from the work and consume lifestyle, there is no national movement, no peer group to take guidance from. There is the parallel green movement but they lack introspection and guidance too and frankly, they are kind of pussies. I just don't see them studying life in prison, blind people or the tragically poor to find out how to conserve resources and live better. Mostly they are gullible consumers who will buy a prius instead of ride a bike or environmentally friendly unbleached paper napkins instead of using a rag. Its a pretty lonely path. There are times I have to consciously stop myself from ridiculing consumers who are caught up in thinking about a handbag that will magically bestow class or a chocolate bar that is "good for you." Its for the best really, that I don't have an opposing opinion to tempt me away from my new belief system.

In the end I will just say, the longer I do this the easier it will become. A lot of progress has been made already and the failing dollar, resources that require full scale invasions to harvest (OIL) and an uncertain global future will only make it easier.

Haha, You Suck...

I love a good buzzkill and nothing follows the world's largest beef recall like this. That's right, turns out that phony baloney fake meats, organic milk and tomatoes are manufactured by the corporate machine. The sell was great, a few dollars more for better quality and more nurturing farm practice - maybe even a little boost for mother earth? Well, you just keep believing that. I have to admit, I got rooked. That organic cow milk was pretty good and I didn't mind the extra buck for ultra-pasteurized milk, since a half gallon usually goes bad before I finish it. Believing that it was anything but milk, and that it might be harvested in a way more expensive than it needed to be for boutique purposes, well that is how naive I am.

Beef Recall

Recently the Humane Society caught a beef processing plant in California sneaking downed cattle, which are cows too sick to even stand, into the food supply. Caught on secret video, workers sprayed sick and dying cows with firehoses, rammed them with forklifts and dragged them into processing facilities. The video is particularly disturbing and it prompted the largest beef recall in history, four times larger than the previous largest recall. The reason for the prohibition on downed cattle should be obvious. Cows that get sick in these high density lots and slaughterhouses usually have E. Coli or Mad Cow disease the very last thing you want to do is cut them open. The recall affects beef that goes back 2 years, the meat was served in school lunches and elderly aid programs, so most of it has already been eaten. If you were trying not to catch mad cow disease... too late.

Moral: Vegetarian. 

People are Smart

That's right. People are smart. We are smarter now than we have ever been in all of human history and don't let anyone tell you different. What has compelled this statement? Well, I'll tell you. Susan Jacoby, author, has been making the rounds and she is shilling her new book in all the usual places where people like to be told they are smarter than everyone else. She cites prime time reality shows and religious fundamentalist groups as sources for the theory that people - as a whole - are getting "more ignorant." This is not the first time I have heard this assessment of society and its not the first time I have declared it as nothing more than self serving bullshit. 

People are not getting dumber. Just because they do not make time in their days to read or use big words or know the obscure histories of obscure nations - that does not necessarily make a person dumb. I have succeeded in giving the impression of intelligence by merely controlling conversation. By only talking about the things I know most about people think I  am a genius. You will never catch me going on national television so that Jeff Foxworthy can ask me questions from a third grade lesson book.

Its true that there is a total lack of critical analysis in daily life and we tend to accept blindly some very foolish things, but in defense of a society, we have to absorb so much more information than before. The complexity of our society is exploding exponentially - daily. I never heard of stem cells before 2002, so how am I supposed to have an opinion about the moral implications of using embryos to rebuild Christopher Reeves spine? If NPR tells me they are good, I follow, were I a religious man and the preacher said they were bad, I'd probably follow him because who has time to figure this stuff out?

She cites "good old days" arguments for a more advanced and enlightened society. How preceding generations were more studious, reading classics and writing actual letters with grammar. FDR would tell people to get maps and follow along "picture pages" style while he did his fireside chat. People don't have maps anymore, we have Google Earth now. We can see the bombed out holes in the Afghan countryside in realtime via satellite, of course I'm not going to get a fucking map and look this shit up. Way back then they had party lines for the phone - meaning you shared the phone line with the whole neighborhood, your only source of information was a hulking radio that ran on vacuum tubes, no one is going to tell me that this should be the model for our ideal future society.

People are smart. Smart and only getting smarter. To say that one of the most advanced countries in the world is populated by idiots is a bold statement designed for no other reason than to irritate people and sell books. For all Susan Jacoby's big brains - I would bet her VCR is still blinking 12:00.

Witchcraft

I like to pretend that I live in a twentieth century modern sort of world, like in the scifi movies I saw as a kid. We have robots vacuuming the floor and all the knowledge of human history at our fingertips, but every now and then something happens that forces us to say "What the fuck?". I had a what the fuck moment today when I read this article about a woman on trial for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia. That's right, witchcraft. She was imprisoned in 2005 by the religious police. She was beaten and forced to sign a confession she could not read with a thumbprint because she could not write, because a man accused her of making him .... impotent. 

Being a Massachusetts native, I am particularly sensitive to the subject of capitol punishment for witchcraft. We had an incident back in 1692 that we have never been able to live down. Regrettably, Salem has become a theme park dedicated to witchcraft, choosing to emphasize the supernatural angle instead of the gross perversion of justice/wrongful capitol punishment aspect of the event. I guess tourists are more interested in spooky witches than frightened illiterate farmers killing their neighbors for no reason.

From now on, whenever I hear anything about Saudi Arabia I am going to think about it as being very much like Massachusetts in 1692. There is something very unsettling about someone being PUT TO DEATH because a man can't get an erection. To be clear - this went to COURT, in front of a JUDGE, and they made this decision.

The Metric System

One of my new year resolutions was the complete adoption of the metric system. In a global economy, there is absolutely no good reason to keep using the outmoded, and frankly very confusing, imperial system. Inches, pounds and gallons, what the hell kind of units are these? And how many combine to make a mile or a ton? The math involved in maintaining this inelegant system is overly complex, particularly when a better system is available in every country except for three. You want to know why no other country is interested in buying products from the United States? Because you have to buy a whole new set of tools to go along with it! I find it personally amusing to hear motorheads chatting up their engines using units of elizabethan measurement, but as a practical matter, its long past time to give it up and join the rest of the world.

Moral: Get with the fucking program America.

Soap

I am not even going to pretend like I even care what it says on the side of this bottle. Something about we are all one and all is love, but what is really important is what is inside. Dr. Bronner's magic 18 in 1 minty fresh soap is the choice for minimalists everywhere. There is nothing more refreshing after a funky August day than a shower with Dr Bronner's all love soap.
Apparently you can use it for 18 different kinds of cleaning, from dishes to floors to brushing your teeth, but I recommend external use only. I have used it to clean the floor (that one time I cleaned the floor) and it worked pretty well for the laundry when I was out of laundry soap, so I can vouch for 3 of the 18 alternate uses.
The irony that one of the greatest soaps ever made was invented by - and for - Hippies, is not lost on me. I honor that history and buy mine at the nearby food co-op. Pick up a bottle, if for no other reason than you need something to read while your low flow toilet is clogged.

Disorder

So you throw shit at it? Oh I am totally getting this thing.

Thanks Yanko

Republicans

I have never had much affection for republicans, so I don't bother watching their coverage. I catch snippets of it here and there and the content is lacking, Mostly focus grouped platitudes and staged cleverness that are so embarrassingly asinine that they may as well have been rapped.

The last few years have not been kind to the republican party. Despite having control of our entire government and free reign on the budget process they have made it clear that they plain, old fashion suck. Everything that makes a republican a republican has been proven wrong. Gun control is hard to argue against in the wake of school shootings, Free trade took a beating after NAFTA was roundly proven to do more harm then good and then propose CAFTA which is the same greasy stuff. Don't get me started on "family values" and "fiscal responsibility".

The only trick they have left is immigration, but this was always a minor issue to them. They don't even have a consensus that I can tell, except that its bad. Some want high fences. Others say that, yeah fences are OK, but leave a hole for workers to get through because Americans won't clean a grease trap (for the record, I have cleaned a grease trap). This argument over immigration has something civil-war-y about it, should we oppress people to get low cost labor? I have an inkling that the argument for slavery was something like "There are some jobs that confederates just won't do."

I really thought they were washed up. H.W. was no reagan and Dole was no H.W. and Bush Jr. is no Dole and this crop of hopefuls leaves a lot to be desired. Yet they endure. Someone somewhere is watching this stuff and saying "That's my guy." The only reason I can think that people vote for them? I think they feel sorry for them. Like when a kid shows you a magic trick and you pretend you don't know how it works and act all surprised when they show you your card - even though it isn't really your card - you just want them to feel good. They spend all this money and make the effort to be your friend - what are you going to do? Tell them there's no Santa?

Moral: Barack Hussein Obama

Boxes

This is a Snap-N-Store box. I got some from Staple's when I was trying to get organized last year. I never really got organized, but my mess is confined to the cool little cubes instead of running the rest of the house. The only appeal that they have over similar boxes or even plain old cardboard boxes is the snaps. They look Ramones-y and kind of tough, you know, tough for a box. Like the actual Ramones, they aren't really tough at all but they are adequate for my needs and the punk appeal will keep me from putting them in the basement.

Bleach

This year for New Year's I am giving up bleach. Don't get me wrong, bleach is a powerful cleaning agent that has removed many an embarrassing personal stain and I love it, but I can no longer justify using it. I looked it up on the household database (because reading the label was too hard) and found that it was only 5% sodium hypochlorite (active ingredient) and 95% water. I have seen what that 5% has done to my foulest of foul clothes, even further diluted within the full load of a washing machine and decided that it is too powerful a chemical to pour nonchalantly into the drain, even only a capful at a time. It'd be better to dress in dark clothing.

As for the household cleaning function, I have heard of alternatives like baking soda, lemon, vinegar, and elbow grease, but I have personally never had much success with any of these - particularly not with the elbow grease. I'll do some experiments and see what actually works.

Moral: Wear dark colors

Jenny Holzer

I must beg for an indulgence. This link will take you to the Mass Moca live webstream of Jenny Holzer's exhibit. During my formative years I took a bold solo bus trip to New York City. Unsure of what I would encounter there I was eyes wide and alert to every detail. If I was unprepared for anything it was the sheer size of that sprawling city, I could almost hear the bedrock groaning underneath the weight of so many buildings. As the bus made its final go round and was easing through traffic towards the Port Authority bus depot, I noticed that intermittent marquees had these cryptic statements on them. I had accidentally stumbled upon Jenny Holzer's truism exhibit. The experience was as intended, to catch unwitting travelers off guard and make them say "What the fuck?" and I was hooked. Contemporary art is not an easy thing to appreciate and if there was a first for me it was Jenny Holzer. It was the first time I saw it and said "I don't care what anyone says, this is art."

Happy New year

Occasionally we must restate our purpose and many of us do this around the first of the year. The "New Year Resolutions" are when we audit, admit our failings and determine that we can always do better. Much bluster is made of "eating less/exercising more" and anyone who is still smoking naturally swears it off, but best efforts tend to fail around February and the status quo wins out. We end up playing Keno at the bar instead of going to our kids dance recital.

Normally this is where I would plug for minimalism. I would recommend a life less complex, providing more satisfaction with fewer daily rigors, but I am finding this is unnecessary. In the last few months, with a plummeting dollar driving up the price of gas, leaden playthings from chinese sweatshops, record foreclosures and a poor crop of presidential hopefuls, the tide is turning towards minimalism. Buying less, riding a bike to work, and a victory garden will become the norm in the wake of a recession. Those of us who are already prepared and choose to save rather than spend, know how to shop for food and conserve energy will be relatively unaffected while our suburban doppelgangers complain endlessly.

I don't want to sound cynical, far from it. I have great hope for the future. Bad ideas can only be carried so long as there isn't a better one to replace it and we are knocking out failed conventions every few weeks now. People are smarter, living longer and communicating better than any other time in human history. Tolerance and liberty are complimentary virtues and we are finally starting to understand it, even if we don't articulate it.

Do the right thing and have a Happy New Year.

Lecture

Without actually using the word minimalism, Mark Adams lays out a very good case for it in his address to the Royal Society. The title of the lecture is "Less but better: A return to common sense." Give it a listen, because I know you aren't doing anything important.

weblog

Yo.
Wasted food.
Check it.

Listen

There is a good interview with Michael Adelson on Skepticality. The subject is the recent passing of the brilliant public intellectual Rabbi Sherwin Wine, but the conversation digressed into some illuminating points about music and society. Among the things I found fascinating was the "music genome" project and how we have been "Audienced" by systems that track our choices in music. Radio stations play a song, tally how often it is played and thus determines that it is popular. Radio stations respond by playing it more and the effect is a feedback loop resulting in the homogeneous culture that we know and love today. Application of this technology by big box retailers and supermarkets who track purchases with "loyalty cards" and aggregate data is used in much the same way. Its long, but worth a listen.

Not Well Educated

Let me strongly restate what I said earlier, I have no problem with Jesus but his fans are fucking morons.

Special Olympics

Not too long ago I went to a Celtics game. The Celtics are no longer the dynastic champions of my youth so tickets are fairly cheap and always available. I don't even know who they were playing, the other team was wearing blue I recall, but for two professional basketball teams it wasn't all that exciting to watch. Someone would score, someone would foul, someone would take a free throw and for the most part the crowd could care less. At halftime we were all pretty ambivalent about the outcome and a lot of folks were getting ready to call it a night. The halftime show that night? It was an exhibition by the Special Olympics basketball team.

I don't have a lot of history in dealing with the disabled, but I have more than most. Part of my grade school education included a sensitivity to the handicapped program which changed forever the way I deal with the disabled. A disabled person would come into our class and we would talk with them. They would explain how they get by without being able to see, hear, missing arms, that sort of thing. They let us touch the stump where the arms used to be. After that we would do exercises so that we would know what it was like to be blind or deaf. I have to admit that I thought riding around in a wheelchair would be kind of fun until I tried it, and what a pain in the ass it was. We experienced the world very differently and in some cases rather unpleasantly. Part of the class included some instruction on how to communicate with the deaf - not full ASL, but at least how to look directly at them when you talk and write down exotic words like street names and how to walk with the blind. My interaction with the handicapped makes some people uncomfortable to watch because I tend to be very at ease and almost dismissive of their disabilities.

One night I spent a good deal of time talking with a blind fellow about minimalism. I had some questions about how he organized his home and prioritized his possessions. I had this idea that the minimalists home should be like that of the blind - that you should be able to find everything without being able to see. I admired the discipline that it required to keep a home in that state and told him so. Helen Keller learned to read and write using only the sense of touch, I could never be so strong. There is a lot of benefit to be had by understanding the special needs of the disabled. For example, imagine if ASL were taught to everyone, what an amazing linguistic dimension that would add to everyday life?

As for the Special Olympics basketball team, well they hit the court. A few people snickered, made some ignorant jokes, but probably just because they were nervous. They played very much the way you would imagine that the Special Olympics basketball team would play. Double dribbling, passing to the wrong team, a few slips here and there - but let me tell you...
When that ball hit the rim... rolled around a little and finally fell into the net... Boston Garden TOTALLY FUCKING EXPLODED! I am serious when I say that I have never heard a crowd cheer so loud for anything. The stadium shuddered with applause. Another point, more riotous cheering, then the other team scored - even louder! Seriously, that was the best basketball game ever, they played with real heart and up to this point I had never seen that before. The Special Olympics is totally fucking awesome.