Currently viewing the tag: "sometimes I read"

Monday morning wreckage

By On October 4, 2010 · In As I Am Now

imag0014 Newsflash: Disappointing reality show is disappointing. N and I watched two episodes of TLC’s Sister Wives last night (this is what happens when you decide $14 is too much to pay to watch Showtime’s one hour of not-suck a week, Dexter) and I gotta say: I finally understand what Hannah Arendt meant about the “banality of evil.”* Three cheerful blond wives, 16 cheerful mostly-blond children, and one cheerful blond, goateed patriarch who looks as though in another life he’d be roadie-ing for the Gin Blossoms: BORING. Boring, boring, boring. New brunette sister-wife-to-be with three blond children? Also boring. TLC should have called this show Hoarders: The Wives and Children Edition. It would be better that way.

My critical nature was particularly aggro this weekend, a powder keg set off by the under-representation of women in hip-hop and continuing until the credits rolled on Sister Wives, at which point N summed up my grousing as “Suck suck suck grar what’s next to suck?”**

In less-fighty, good news, I’m happy to pass on word that as of today, Jim Hanas’ e-book Why They Cried is available for the Kindle, Sony Reader, and Apple iOS things.

OK finally, my officemate brought me this delicious Halloween-themed confection above [click to enlarge].

Me: A fruit-flavored tombstone. What flavor, I wonder?
Him: Fruit.
Me: God, it’s sad that some Chinese factory worker was paid 5 cents an hour to write the little inscription on this thing.
Him: It’s also sad that it’s the tombstone for a 3-year-old.
Me: Well, whaddya know.

You know, for kids!

*Setting aside the appalling nature of the FLDS and polygamy in general (heh, yeah, let’s just set that aside for a moment) I have a hard time believing that Kody Brown, the patriarch, makes enough money as an “advertising salesman” to house, clothe, and feed a family of 20. (Well, now he does, given what I assume is a handsome compensation for their participation in the show.) How much bleeding the beast is going on? Maybe the police can investigate that as well, while they’re at it.
**That was a rhetorical question, but this morning at the gym I found my answer: MTV’s World of Jenks. I can only hope that the last episode of the series involves him going to live with grizzly bears.
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I’m a walking, talking ideas man*

By On September 20, 2010 · In As I Am Now

This may come as a surprise to those of you who know how jaded I am, but reading that Civil Rights-era photographer Ernest Mathers was exposed as an FBI informant last week really shocked me. What would compel someone to do such a thing? And how did no one figure it out sooner?

In left-wing activist circles, what do government moles look like? Some are decidedly “fresh-faced” young women, others assume the wise elder role, but a lot of them? They’re attractive, charismatic dudes. (Not counting the agents provocateurs in black bloc/GTO protests and Hal Turner, of course.)

Last week Mikki Halpin tweeted this article: Why Misogynists Make Great Informants. The central premise is interesting and credible — look at Brandon Darby (who is mentioned) and Rob Gilchrist. (I was reminded of Tanja Nijmeijer’s story of her experience as part of FARC.) Ultimately, however, the article failed to fully make the connection between “activist leaders can be chauvinist, manipulative, misogynist assholes” and “by extension, they willingly rat out their organizations.” Still, what is indisputable is that people of color, women and trans* members of activist communities are demeaned, subjugated, and treated like footservants by paternalist egomaniacs with Christ complexes. It’s worth the read.

Meanwhile, our tax dollars (via OHS) are paying for do-nothing private “contractors” for “intelligence on terrorism threats” despite the fact that the Pennsylvania State Police are already tasked with doing just this as part of, um, their JOB:

Adrian R. King Jr., director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) until late 2005, said the state police’s Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center has trained analysts who supply intelligence information and investigative data to help law enforcement counter potential threats.

Instead, he said, the state was paying the Philadelphia-based Institute on Terrorism Research and Response for little more than a compilation of planned public demonstrations by activist groups, including antiwar, environmental, and animal-rights advocates.

I question the legitimacy of these sorts of surveillance programs to begin with, okay, but c’mon folks, if you’re focusing on potential domestic terrorist threats in the state of Pennsylvania and all you can come up with are radical environmentalist potlucks, that’s like trying to study homicides in Florida and overlooking all the serial killers.

*My office mate and I were talking about Chumbawamba the other day, and how everyone learns about them the same way: You’re 17 and someone plays Anarchy for you and you’re like THIS IS AWESOME and then you go to the record store and you accidentally buy that one album of 18th-century anarchist folk songs and you’re like FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

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Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

By On June 7, 2010 · In Adipocere

I have this thing now, it’s called exerting the least possible effort in the fight to save publishing and support independent houses and bookstores. So at least once a month, I buy a book at a local indie shop. I know — I’m a visionary.

A month or so back I bought Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, a memoir by Frank Meeink, a former racist skinhead and recovering addict from Philadelphia, “as told to” Jody Roy, PhD. I chose it for a couple of reasons:

  • I am somewhat fascinated by the white power/patriot movement/far-right-crazies
  • I lived in Philly for awhile and I was always running into those fucking assholes
  • I like French flaps

I will now reveal my own bigotry: I hate the City of Brotherly Love. In 1995, taking some time to “reflect” on what I wanted to do with my life (i.e., trying to pull my shit together after what had been an unexpectedly bad year of college), I lived in Philly with two friends of mine, on a cute little dead-end street in Center City. And I hated it. I hated its bizarrely parochial and stupid citizens, its attitude toward cyclists, its cops, its crustpunks, its Krishnas, its lame music scene, and its seemingly uniform, deep-rooted racism. (And yeah, I do recognize the fact that this was fully 15 years ago and things have <facetious>almost certainly</facetious> improved since then. But my memories of Philly are like a prehistoric creature encased in amber. And I would fully endorse that as an urban initiative.) I had jobs in a couple shops on South Street, selling band t-shirts and rings with dolphins on them and Manic Panic and clove cigarettes to 13-year-olds. And, most annoyingly, I regularly dealt with the skinheads who trolled South Street. They would invite me to come “hang out.” (Blond hair, blue eyes…I guess it was enough to overlook the other, quite obvious signs that I was not an ideal candidate for the white power movement.) And what did I do every single time? I’m embarrassed to admit that I merely politely declined. Because I am the biggest wimp in the world, and these dudes — whom I’d have laughed or snarled at if they’d only been a bunch of your standard Philly inbreds — were indeed kinda scary.

So now that I’ve gotten that out of the way: the book. You know what? If it helps just one person realize that Racism is Bad, then that’s great. I wish Meeink well; I hope he stays sober and keeps doing what he’s doing and running his youth hockey program. But this memoir left a lot to be desired. It plodded, it meandered, it repeated itself. And in trying to capture Meeink’s voice, Roy manages to fill page after page with some seriously hokey metaphors and language (I mean, c’mon: “ain’t”? Listen to the Fresh Air interview linked below and tell me how many times he uses “ain’t.” ). And it simultaneously offers too few compelling details and too many unnecessary details. There are dozens of instances in which he recalls the picayune — the precise number of pills he took or how much something cost or an entire headcount at some meeting, for example — yet neglects to recount the important details, like what people looked like or the conversations he had. This book would have benefited from more guidance (and a hell of a lot more editing). What should be a compelling look inside the mind of a legendarily violent skinhead and how he ultimately came to question everything he believed is, instead, an endless saga lacking the elements of passion or introspection the story deserves.

You can hear his Fresh Air interview here. I found listening to him talk about his life far more interesting than reading his memoir. He says something interesting, that as an angry teenager, he could’ve easily fallen in with any group; the skinheads just happened to be the first to get to him. In high school, I often wondered about some of my friends in the hardcore scene — clambering for the mic at shows to sing anti-homophobic anthems, they seemed like they’d have been just as comfortable if the lyrics had been about putting gays on an island and blowing it up.

Speaking of: I know I mentioned this already, but I’m fascinated (though unsurprised) by the recent murders of white power movement leaders. And I think both stories are entirely plausible. Have you ever seen a skinhead rally? It’s basically a codpiece and a full set of teeth away from a goddamned Pride march. And there actually are gay “racialists” out there. I had an issue of MaximumRockNRoll that had an article on the topic of gay skins and the MRR archives are pointing me to an article from 2002 but I’m pretty sure I read it in the early 90s–if anyone has a scan of it, feel free to email me at genius@derasso.com.

Weak ending, I know. I had a whole ‘nother section about the hardcore movement and its thuggishness and misogyny (what a treat!), but that’s just going to have to wait until later. I started this post a month and a half ago and I don’t feel like waiting another month and a half to publish.

[edited to add: In thinking about it some more, I feel like I've been a little mean to this book. It has messages that will resound with some people -- one being that fucked-up parents beget fucked-up kids, a very popular memoir theme these days -- but the (unintentional) volleying between the banal and the ultraviolence and the prodigal-son-returns stuff just didn't appeal to me. But you know what? I hated Soul On Ice too. I think I just must have a problem with men!

Oh! And! Another thing that creases me is that Meeink speaks about racism on behalf of the ADL, a group I am not particularly fond of, because I also have a problem with assholes.]

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Literary organisms

By On March 24, 2010 · In Cremains

ontheroadSince there is a dearth of original content here, I thought I’d send you over to Made by Many, where there’s a cool interview with designer, artist, and data visualizer Stefanie Posavec:

I wanted to find a way of communicating the complexities found in literature and highlighting the similarities and differences in the writing styles of various authors.The structure of a novel and its punctuation, parts of speech, and words per sentence were used to generate the final complex patterns. Any piece of literature can be visualised using these approaches, but the focus of the project was the novel On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, because of its importance to me while I was growing up in Denver, Colorado – a key city within the novel.

For this project I gathered all of the data by hand, counting words and sentences, and carefully dividing a battered copy of On the Road into key themes (such as Women, Parties, Sketches of Regional Life, and so on) using markers and highlighters.

I was able to reduce the entire novel into a stack of paper filled with lists of numbers. I found this process of compression incredibly satisfying. Using these numbers, I created the graphics by hand in Adobe Illustrator instead of using a specific program to generate the visuals.

Finally, the whole aesthetic of the series of posters and books was based around the time period when On the Road was written. I selected typography that referenced typefaces in use at the time, and I chose the colours used to represent key themes within the novel from 1940s vintage car paint swatches.

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