Greg Brown

Brief moment from my Iowa trip, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love family gatherings

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:06:18 -0500

Aunt Rose: One of Linda's friends is living out in Colorado on a community farm, and they adopted two pregnant goats. One died giving birth, so now they have a bunch of (goat) kids to take care of. I told them, "You do realize that they're born in both male or female varieties, right? And while you can milk the female ones, what can you do with the male goats?"
Rest of extended family, in near-unison: Eat them.

Palin resigned today while I was up in Iowa, and the speech she...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:11:00 -0500

Palin resigned today while I was up in Iowa, and the speech she gave about her decision is borderline incomprehensible and pretty hilarious. Brings back good ol’ memories of freshman-year public speaking class.

Follow along with the transcript! This clip starts about 2/3rds through the speech.

My favorite part? A tie between the random wildlife sounds in the background and the end-of-speech pan to show the less-than-a-dozen people in the audience.

Miscellanea that I'm going to list in bullet points in a sad attempt to make them look semi-official in some sense (really a failed endeavor on the internet but nobody's stopped me from trying yet)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:01:45 -0500

Interested in the book reviews I’ve posted recently? Well, all the ones I’ve written so far have been nicely categorized using the tag function, ready for your perusal.
I also have a Goodreads account now, in case you prefer that to Tumblr.
Unfortunately, my reading pace is set to abate somewhat as I dig into some side-projects in July. This recent spate of book-reading was mainly an experiment to see if I could maintain the focus necessary for it, and I kinda succeeded in that. So it’s on to bigger and not-better-but-more-necessary things.
I am in Iowa today for some sort of extended family gathering, and hopefully I’ll come back with at least one or two interesting pictures. But no more posts today.
Mindy’s visiting Manhattan (KS) this weekend and bringing back her brand of awesome to our fine town, so I’ll be scuttling back there tomorrow for that.

Yesterday I finished Columbine by Dave Cullen and it’s...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:42:00 -0500

Yesterday I finished Columbine by Dave Cullen and it’s incredibly, incredibly good. So good that I slammed through it in an afternoon and evening, only stopping for dinner and a mandatory scheduling meeting.

I originally heard about this book as the first complete accounting of the shootings at Columbine High School. And it succeeds on that count, deftly deconstructing the events of April 20, 1999, even as they confused the media, the police, and the student population while they happened. To tell the story of that day is an impressive feat of journalism in itself, but Cullen doesn’t stop there.

Out of a 350-page book, only the first 100 pages is devoted to a conventional recounting of the attack. For the remainder of the story, Cullen pursues twin narratives: Dylan and Eric as they slipped down into being ready for the attack, and the aftermath of the attack on both media and survivors. It seems gimmicky at first glance - like a parody of a New Yorker article - but works out tremendously well thanks to Cullen’s larger goal.

Using Columbine as the title of the book isn’t a blunt tool to lure sales in airport bookstores, but an uncannily subtle statement about the real subject; Cullen isn’t just talking about the shooting here, but what meanings the event and the word “Columbine” have for everyone involved.

To the media, it was a pair of loners and goths looking to wreak vengeance on those who had bullied and shunned them. To the police who responded that day, it was designed as a school shooting. To Cassie Bernall’s parents, it was the summation of their daughter’s spiritual journey as she bravely professed her faith to the gunmen. But all these explanations were categorically wrong.

The real drama here isn’t the incident itself, but instead how each person sought to work out the meaning of that incident. To Eric Harris, it meant a display of tyrannical superiority over everyone. To Dylan Klebold, it meant having an outlet for the internal pains that wracked his psyche.

Everyone, in the course of the book, ends up working out their own meaning as to what happened. Columbine - which started out the novel as the name of the high-school and surrounding community - starts to fracture both literally and figuratively. Differences in meaning lead to different factions within the community of victims, factions who often argue over how they should interact with the county government, the media, and the watching nation.

It’s incredibly interesting and touching and heartbreaking stuff. I’d recommend it to almost everyone from casual readers to “serious” book nerds like myself, and will be shocked if it doesn’t clean house when awards season swings around. Regardless of whether you’re interested in the shootings themselves, the larger world evoked by this book is amazing.

Bob Ross, streaming 24/7

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:38:06 -0500

Bob Ross, streaming 24/7:

BobRossCam is the new PuppyCam, I’m telling you.

(link via laydownyourburdens and yourdp)

The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley was hugely...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:08:11 -0500

The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley was hugely disappointing, and probably because it’s not that good.

The premise of the book is actually pretty interesting: illustrate the various philosophies to death by recounting the personal deaths (and lives) of famous philosophers throughout history and how that compared or contrasted with their philosophy. However, there are a few mistakes that Critchley makes in telling the tales:

Trying to tell the stories of over 190 different philosophers… in a 250 page book.
Unable to decide whether the capsule biograpies are meant to be read in sequence or at will.
Immediately - and with little supporting evidence - imposing his own viewpoint in the picture and allowing it to warp his histories without any apparent consideration of alternative stances beyond mere recounting.

As a result, Critchley rarely manages to eke any depth out of the philosophers discussed. This isn’t too much of a problem early on in the greek philosophers, whose differences can be bluntly hashed out without too much loss in detail. But once he gets to medieval times, the enterprise starts to fall apart. (More later.)

Critchley’s prose is merely middling, despite being specifically praised by Lewis Lapham (who normally has excellent taste as showcased in Lapham’s Quarterly). His tone is so bland that it seems equally ill-suited to discussing philosophy or humorous anecdotes, despite being employed in the service of both. Sometimes there enough transitions between sections to indicate they were meant to be read as a whole, but other times they seem almost slapdash. Even when we’re being given the These Are Connected signposts, there doesn’t seem to be much added by their juxtaposition.

Finally, the whole book is semi-stifled by Critchley himself, who declares his position from the beginning and never ceases to remind you whether he agrees or disagrees with the author at hand. This is ok when it comes to constructing philosophy, but not when you’re laying claim to exegenesis (deciphering the meaning of texts) or recounting their lives in a historically-accurate manner. But yet it does, and the result is that I was deeply suspicious of everything Critchley said. And because he slammed all 190 people into only 250 pages, there’s very little given in the way of corroborating evidence. Yuck.

I almost wrote this negative review last night at about 100 pages in, but decided to persevere in hopes that it would get better once we reached more modern philosophers with better documentation of their personal lives. It did get better, but only mildly. There were moments that made me laugh, but only a handful in the whole book.

The Book of Dead Philosophers would be far better served as a two-part arrangement: a quick survey of the deaths of philosophers, followed by a deeper examination of the handful of philosophers whose work Critchley truly finds valuable. As is, it seems too much like Critchley wants to impress you with his research and then slip a fast one on you by sneaking in his own opinion as fact. I found it frustrating in the same way that I find it frustrating to read The Economist’s smug claim to stating The Way Things Are while cutting off at the knees my own ability to critically examine the claims.

In the end, the best praise I can give this book is that it was smoothly-written enough that I was over with it fairly quickly. Only a night and a morning spent, and I’m onward to greener pastures.

Jeff Goldblum’s posthumous appearance on The Colbert...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:39:00 -0500

Jeff Goldblum’s posthumous appearance on The Colbert Report this Monday.

I love Colbert’s willingness to turn his show into surreal sketches like this one, which is one of many attributes that makes The Colbert Report much funnier than The Daily Show.

"Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to..."

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:46:00 -0500

“Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest.

Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation’s affairs.”

- Woodrow Wilson, urging Congress to war on April 2nd, 1917. Four days later, Congress declared just that.

Wilson was right about the power of transparency to curb wrongs, but wrong about self-governed nations being immune to deceit and subterfuge (as a glance at the CIA’s history will indicate).

English Language Irregularities

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:44:53 -0500

Three distinctly different transformations from present to past-tense:

Slide -> Slid
Glide -> Glided
Ride -> Rode

What the heck?

Bonus homework: figure out all the words that end in “-id”. It seems like a pretty finite number at first thought.

So far, I’ve come up with the following: id, slid, bid, hid, lid, arachnid, fetid. Any others?

Richard Feynman explaining how trains stay on their tracks,...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:56:31 -0500

Richard Feynman explaining how trains stay on their tracks, which is a way more clever method than I imagined. He has a way of explaining science that’s so exciting, clear, and brilliant.

Eyes on the Prize episode 1 -...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:55:16 -0500

Eyes on the Prize episode 1 - “Awakenings”

Originally broadcast in 1987 and 1990, Eyes on the Prize is one of the most important records we have of the American civil rights movement. It’s an epic 14-hour miniseries chronicling the years 1954-1985 and featuring testimony from the major (and less major) players in the fight - many of whom have died since the documentary was made.

It also has a wide array of footage from the time period, which is actually what caused the documentary some trouble when the rights clearance for that footage expired. As a result, it lay in legal limbo until donations allowed the rights to be re-purchased a few years back and the documentary rebroadcast on PBS in 2006 and 2008. Even today, though, it’s only available in an expensive $375 DVD set approved for classroom use only.

Well, that and YouTube. Yay for the internet! This playlist only emcompasses the first episode, but the same user has uploaded the rest of the series in 10-minute chunks.

This weekend I also finished reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov,...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:49:41 -0500

This weekend I also finished reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and it’s the most beautiful - but also unnerving - novel I’ve ever read.

First things first: the novel starts out with the best opening to anything ever in the English language.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Impressive, huh? But more importantly, the beautiful writing has an effect in the storytelling, working as a sort of aesthetic anaesthetic that dulls our gut-level revulsion to what the narrator Humbert Humbert does to secure control over his love Lolita. There are sections that sound like the most entrancing love-letter ever… until Nabokov reminds us a few sentences later that Lolita isn’t even in her teens yet. The effect is unbelievably disconcerting, and kept me on my toes throughout the early part of the novel.

Kubrick pursued a similar paradox in A Clockwork Orange, seeking to make the violence so beautiful that the viewer sympathizes - in a way - with the main character’s psychopathic behavior. He neglects others’ interests, but seemingly in the pursuit of a Greater Good like beauty, truth, etc. We’re seduced by Humbert Humbert’s artistic gifts, which were ironically insufficient to seduce Lolita herself.

But after the opening 100 pages or so, Humbert Humbert’s manipulation of the reader starts to fall apart. We see glimpses of his efforts at control, such as how he would physically force his former wife to agree. By the time Lolita is his captive prey, we’re familiar with his twisted logic and rationalizations for actions. Notable amongst these is one scheme to drug Lolita and fondle her unconscious body, as to not cause her psychic pain from an attempt while awake.

As the novel progresses, the horror shifts. Humbert Humbert isn’t in love with Lolita, but some twisted shadow of a fantasy that he resolutely associates with her. Pedophilia is troubling enough, but Nabokov reveals it to be layered on a vile brand of unrequited love. Humbert is willing to do almost anything to keep his power over Lolita, even when his willpower is good for nothing more than… well, I’ll just say that Nabokov knows all about Chekhov’s gun.

Despite the moral stomach-twisting that it puts me through, the prose really is fantastic enough to justify reading the novel all by itself. I devoured the novel’s 300 pages in less than two days, and I’ve found my own writing style to have sightly shifted since starting my read. My sentences tend to be longer and more gnarled, favoring the longer constructions that Nabokov occasionally slips into.

It sounds ridiculous but our finest prose-stylist of the English language may be Nabokov, who first started writing in Russian. He was trilingual in his childhood, though, which he shows off throughout the novel by throwing in snippets of French. It’s for those and other obscure references that I’m tempted to buy the The Annotated Lolita featuring translations and all sorts of explanatory footnotes. I’m glad that I went with the plain novel first, though, since I’ve heard that the annotations spoil later events in the novel. As is, I could just skip over the confusing references and just enjoy the beauty in the words.

Anyways, I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone. The book is over 50 years old, but reads as fresh as ever. I’m beginning to suspect that Pynchon and others started to play postmodernism’s games afterwards because you just can’t beat Nabokov in a straight write-off. He’s utterly amazing, and his other stuff (like the poem/story/?? Pale Fire) just shot onto my reading list.

"Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future..."

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:09:15 -0500

“Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.”

- Lewis H. Lapham, in the inaugural issue of Lapham’s Quarterly.

Earlier in that essay on the importance of historical perspectives and voices, he also remarks:

We have nothing else with which to build the future except the lumber of the past - history exploited as natural resource and applied technology, telling us that the story painted on the old walls and printed in the old books is also our own.

Remember how I ranted and raved about Lapham’s Quarterly last week? Well, the first-year box set arrived on Saturday and I am incredibly thrilled and over-excited to be digging into it. There’s just so much awesome.

On Friday I finished Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:06:55 -0500

On Friday I finished Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which includes all his published short stories between 1947 and 1972. It’s the first I’ve read by Marquez, and ok, I guess.

One of Marquez’s themes that becomes clear over the course of these twenty-six stories is the way that the odd quickly becomes familiar, and how some things that are familiar are actually rather odd in practice. The first batch of stories, published as “Eyes of a Blue Dog” in Spanish, are insistently concerned with the limits of physical existence. The characters experience blindness, death, and other hardships tied to their bodies. Marquez finds a way to pick out the salient details, creating drama out of even a man shaving himself using his own reflection.

That reflection story in particular manages to hint at his later moves towards the fantastic. The third and final batch of stories starts with the excellent story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” which chronicles the arrival in town of a very old man with enormous wings. Initially a spectacle, he quickly ceases to hold any value for the town’s residents, forced to subsist on mush in a chicken coop. Marquez shows how the ordinary can subtly be fantastic by presenting a fantastic situation that quickly turns ordinary. I suppose this is an aim of the larger magical realism movement too.

The voice is hard to pin down, too. It’s got that slippery feel of translated prose to it, but not the simple, plain-spoken quality of Murakami’s take on magical realism. It can be sensuous one moment, and clinical the next. It dives into characters and spins out of them just as quickly. It refuses to be pinned down, but still feels as if it was all written by the same author. I could never really get my thumb on it, partially because the stories span such a length of time in the developing talent of Marquez.

Overall, it was a pleasure to read but I can’t say that I was blown away like I was by some of the other stuff I’ve read recently. The stories did have their wonderful moments, but they were diffuse and not quite as discrete-blow-to-the-cranium as the best ones are. The book felt weird, but too comfortable for my taste. Maybe it’s because today’s authors have already digested and iterated on Marquez’s style, but the whole experience felt like I was reading something I’d seen somewhere else. I can understand why my friend Maggie so eagerly pushed it on me, but the effect was more of recognizing why it’s good, not feeling why it’s good.

I do think, though, that I’ll eventually try tackling One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez.

RIP Billy Mays :(

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:17:28 -0500

RIP Billy Mays :(

mumblelard: kafka’s pest kontrol Johnson County (Kansas)...

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:52:39 -0500

mumblelard:

kafka’s pest kontrol

Johnson County (Kansas) Library Courier Trucks

I would enjoy seeing one with the Enfield Tennis Academy logo and the pre-Tavis motto, “Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est.”

(via jessamyn via jocolibrary)

These are from my hometown library system and utterly fantastic. I actually worked as a page at one branch by my high-school, and it was a pretty chill and relaxing job.

My Son's Gamble

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:48:16 -0500

My Son's Gamble:

From the NY Times Magazine, a surprisingly understanding look at poker addiction vs. poker as a career. The narrator’s son gets involved in online poker during college, and it quickly subsumes all his other interests until he eventually decides to quit college and go pro.

One interesting avenue not explored here is examining how risk-taking addiction is actually encouraged in other professions, like entrepreneurship. The line between dedication and addiction is often thin, defined more by the results than the behavior itself.

I think this safely qualifies as the most horrifying/obscene...

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:22:00 -0500

I think this safely qualifies as the most horrifying/obscene tweet to cross my desktop this week. Happy Sunday, y’all!

The best banner ad ever?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:59:12 -0500

The best banner ad ever?: Just keep clicking…

Infrastructure for Souls: a comparison of corporate and megachurch architecture

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:01:00 -0500

Infrastructure for Souls: a comparison of corporate and megachurch architecture:

A wonderful essay in Third Canopy on the development of megachurch and corporate aesthetic, complete with great photos. Some of the connections are strained, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Another attribute of note is the way the essay is laid out, trying to capture some of the discrete advancement of page-turns in an online environment. Each spread is carefully laid out like a print magazine, which shirks the advantages of a traditional online article’s river of text. More importantly, though, the page advancement happens naturally and without the sort of ad-clad reloading that you see in most paginated articles online. A++ would read again.

(link via Kottke)