Re: Moab and Arches Natl. Park

I forgot my camera when I made my roadtrip to Moab this last weekend--but that's alright, because I'm reading Sontag's "On Photography" right now, and she reminded me of what I've long suspected: that photographs, far from capturing the moment, actually have the effect of alienating you from your subject.

To photograph something is to be separate from it, not participate with it.  What's more, the photograph tends to supplant the original memory--you begin to remember the photo better than the subject itself.  But now Delicate Arch is etched into my memory, not into a some facebook tag--I experienced the arch for what it was, in the moment, and not for how it could show me off later.

Driving through Arches, I felt like I as in the alien realm of Spaceman Spiff in "Calvin and Hobbes."  Bill Watterson actually said that he modeled the alien landscapes of Spaceman Spiff on southern Utah.  I now see that Watterson had specifically used Arches Natl. Park for his inspiration.  This alien world wasn't alien at all: it was a visit to my childhood.

Re: Ending of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy

"...in the presence of this perpetual influx of beauty [of the ancient Greeks] would he not have to raise his hand to Apollo and exclaim: 'Blessed race of the Hellens!  How great Dionysus must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary to cure you of your dithyrambic madness!'  To such a one, however, an aged Athenian...might answer, 'Say also this, thou curious stranger: what must this people have suffered, that they might become thus beautiful!'" (pg. 92).

I'm not going to claim to have fully understood Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, certainly not on the first reading.  But I will speak from personal experience, especially from grading student reflective essays, that some of the most charming, cheerfuly, passionate, and good-natured people I've ever met, have been survivors of excruciating tragedies. 

Re: Royal Birth

So the Royal Baby's born.  Yipee, I guess.  That Americans, who so long ago severed any and all ties with the UK, are still infatuated with the British Monarchy, is of course nothing new.  What I would like to focus more on is the far more bizarre fact that the English still are!  Because near as I can tell from all my years studying English Literature (and therefore English History), the English have, for centuries, been trying to kill their Monarchs.  That the British Monarchy is one of the few surviving left on Earth is I consider one of the supremest ironies of history.  Consider:

• 1215: You know it's bad when your own nobles are trying to kill you.  King John of England is forced to sign the Magna Carta, limiting his powers, to not only keep his kingdom but his head.
• 1381: Geoffrey Chaucer began writing his Canterbury Tales a mere 6 years after the Peasant Revolt, when a large, angry Peasant army marched on London itself, beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor, and nearly killed Henry II himself.
• 1455-1485: England is torn apart in the War of the Roses, as the competing claims of the Houses of York and Lancaster lead to a veritable slaughter of rival kings.  (This bloody civil war is later commemorated by Shakespeare's history plays).
• 1606: Guy Fawkes attempts what every Englishman has dreamed of doing but never had the guts to do--blow up Parliament.  The assassination of James I was also on the docket that day.
• 1649: Parliament succeeds where Guy Fawkes failed, and beheads Charles I--the King himself!--for high treason.  England experiments with a king-less Republic for the next decade.  The 1660 Restoration of the Monarchy was so tragic for many Englishman, that it drove John Milton to write Paradise Lost.
• 1776: The American Revolution makes a lot more sense when you consider it as a bunch of Englishmen once again trying to depose of their Monarch.
• 1977: British Punk band The Sex Pistols release the single "God Save the Queen," calling hers "A fascist regime" and "She ain't no human being!"  These sentiments are par for the course for '80s British Punk and Pop bands.
• 2011: Prince Charle's motorcade takes a wrong turn during the London Riots, and is promptly surrounded by angry rioters shaking and beating the bullet-proof vehicle with cries of, "Off with his head!"

So really, the question for me isn't why the Royal Birth is still such a delight for Americans (we have an incurable weakness for novelty, after all), but why it's so for the English! 

Story of a Different T-shirt

In which Darwinistic Randomization is at once refuted and reaffirmed.

Early in '09, whilst an inexperienced first year MA student at Utah who surely didn't know what he was doing, I submitted abstracts to a couple of local academic conferences, hoping to build up my CV by getting into at least one.  What was my surprise when I got into both, and now had to write the actual papers!  (My bluff had been called).  What's more, both conferences were the same weekend, and were on opposite sides of the state. 

So, I hammered out a couple of quick papers, stapled them, and began driving across the state.  The first was just this graduate student conference down the road at BYU.  My shoe-string rush-job of a paper contemplated aesthetics as a possible survival mechanism, i.e. we are perhaps capable of experiencing beauty so as to better preserve healthy environments, and also perhaps to help us persevere in harsh ones, and I cited Aristotle's Goods of First and Second Intent and Victor Frankl and Hugh Nibley and etc.  

It was actually a fun presentation that generated some enjoyable discussion.  The surreal part came when the moderator--a BYU English Professor with a delightfully pretentious faux-European accent--asked me and another presenter, "Am I correct in assuming that you are both Darwinists?"

Confused, perplexed, we looked at each other, then at him, and said, "What the...huh??"

"Yes, you are both Darwinists," he continued.  Not knowing how to respond, I just let it go, figuring it would at least make a funny anecdote back at the U.

Besides, there was no time to ponder: right after the conference, I had to immediately drive through the snow to Cedar City for my other conference!  There at SUU, I presented a more conventional paper on Writing Center Pedagogy that I later got published.

The next morning at SUU, there was a lunch and raffle for the conference attendees.  I was mostly uninterested in the door prizes until they announced the free t-shirts, for which I have an incurable weakness.  To my delight, I won!  But then I examined the t-shirt itself.  The front read:

 While the back side read:

I just stared at it in confusion for a minute.  "Am I correct in assuming that you are a Darwinist?" flashed across my mind.  Here I had a nonsensical statement on Darwinism from a BYU Professor that weirdly coincided with this equally nonsensical t-shirt on Darwinism from SUU.  What did this strange confluence of Darwinism mean?  Surely they both meant nothing, yet the sheer proximity of the two events surely meant something!  Or did it?  Was this a sign proving strict Darwinistic Randomization?  But wouldn't such serendipity undermine the very concept of Randomization?  Why do random events tend to cluster?  Are events actually random if they do cluster?  Was this t-shirt a comment on something...about something...or something??

Sphinx-like and inscrutable, I later just threw the t-shirt into my drawer, occasionally pulling it out to tell a funny story with.  I wrapped up that whirl-wind weekend of minor conferences more experienced, but I'm not sure more wise.

Florida, We're Going To Have To Let You Go

A simple desultory philipic, cathartic in nature.

Yes Florida, come in, have a seat.

Is this about Trayvon, you ask?  Frankly Florida, Trayvon's only the latest in a long series of problems we've had out of you lately--though seriously, an armed adult who stalks, provokes, and shoots dead an unarmed black teenager gets off scot-free, while a black woman who fired mere warning shots at her abusive husband gets 20 years?   On the same day?!  Florida, seriously, what's your problem?

Yes, yes, all the states have problems Florida, and we're working on them, but they're nothing like the sheer volume of headaches we get out of you.  Honestly, we have other tropical states Florida, we have other high population states, but somehow you manage to exceed them all in total insanity.

Just within the past couple years, I can rattle off the top of my head: the zombie attack on the homeless man; the adulterous astronauts driving in diapers; UF cutting funding for computer science while expanding the football program; the horse-rider getting a DUI; and, well, any of the other innumerable, frankly bizarre complaints we get out of you quite regularly, Florida.

And that's not to mention the fact that, to paraphrase the After Earth trailer, everything in Florida--the fire ants, the alligators, the sink-holes that consume folks whole--has apparently evolved to kill humans.

And no, these incidents aren't all just harmless, "local color," Florida.  Remember Elian Gonzalez?  Election 2000?  Terri Shiavo?  Florida leading the nation in wrongful convictions?  Casey Anthony?  The Qu'ran-burning preacher?   Tim Tebow?  All from you, Florida.  You.  Hurricanes don't do this much damage.  It's bad enough when your behavior harms just yourself, but when it starts harming others, then we really need to put our foot down.

While this whole Trayvon fiasco isn't as bad (and that's saying something!) as, say, the whole Election 2000 blunder, it's nevertheless symptomatic of a larger pattern of repeated, self-destructive behavior that you've clearly shown no intention of curbing, Florida.  So we're going to curb it for you.  Yes, that's right:

Florida, we're going to have to let you go.

Go where?  Frankly, we don't care.  See if Spain takes you back.  Or give the land back to the Caribes.  Or have a go as an independent failed-state maybe.  We'll move NASA to a less hurricane-infested state.  You can keep DisneyWorld.   We've already promoted Puerto Rico to statehood.  Yes, that's right, Puerto Rico has taken your place.

Here's a box; clean out your desk.  Your last paycheck will be mailed to you.  Security will escort you out the door.

Elegy for a T-Shirt

Travel back with me to Fall 1995--Windows '95 was an innovation instead of a punchline, we were all buying actual, physical CDs of Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Monica Lewinksi was but a White House intern, and you could carry pocket-knives onto planes for 9/11 wasn't even a twinkle in our eyes.

That autumn, I, like near every other child in Centralia, WA, participated in Youth Soccer.  My team's sponsor was the local logging company North Fork Timber, or NFT.  I got a green t-shirt out of it that hung on me loosely and baggy.

Now, it is a fact commonly acknowledged that green t-shirts last for roughly ever, and hence can outlast marble statues, governments, cockroaches, and twinkies.  Something about the green die, I guess.  Thus my senior year of High School, I discovered that this ancient t-shirt in the back of my drawer was not only in pristine condition, but now fit me snugly and perfectly. I began to wear it all the time.

I liked the t-shirt so much that I took it with me to the Dominican Republic MTC. I posed in it with this Dominican paramilitary traffic cop in downtown Santo Domingo.

I wore it on P-Days throughout my LDS Mission to Puerto Rico.

It wasn't until my senior year of college that I noticed I perhaps over-wore it, and so maybe I should save it for only special occasions.

Hence, I made especial sure to wear it on the Great Wall of China...

...and during my internship in Mexico...
 

...and especially in front of the Eiffel Tower...

...the British Museum...

...in Italy...

...and of course inside the Roman Colosseum.

But by the time I got back from Italy, I realized that this beloved t-shirt, now nearly 2 decades old, was so thread-bare, so worn out, that it could no longer travel with me respectably.

Now, I knew any thrift-store would just throw it away, and I would not suffer such a loyal t-shirt to be discarded like some common dishrag!  No, a t-shirt of this legacy required something more honorable, something more commensurate to its dignity...

So tonight, we gave it a proper Viking Funeral.

The blessed shirt didn't even require lighter-fluid to burst into flames of glory.

All joking aside, yes it's just a t-shirt...but like my childhood self, that shirt traveled far more widely than I ever thought possible, far longer than it was ever intended or expected to.  It came to represent not only where I come from, but how far I've come since.  Now cracks a noble heart.  Fare thee well sweet NFT youth soccer t-shirt, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Favorite Lines from G.B. Shaw's "The Revolutionist's Handbook"

From the Pamphlet appended to the end of Shaw's seminal (and delightful) 1903 play "Man and Superman." (Serious, why isn't Shaw as adored nowadays as, say, Oscar Wilde?!)

•  "Do not unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Their tastes may not be the same."
• "Excess of insularity makes a Briton an Imperialist."  (Americans, too, I would argue).
• "Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it."
• "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University education."
• "The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are.  Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty."
• "A learned man is an idler who kills time with study.  Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance."
• "No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another."
• "No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot."
• "Criminals do not die at the hands of the law.  They die at the hands of other men."
• "Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind."
• "Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior."
• "Property, said Proudhoun, is theft.  This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject."
• "What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts."
• "Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness."
• "In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will."
• "Happiness and Beauty are by-products.  Folly is the direct pursuit of Happiness and Beauty."
• "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness."
• "A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country.  Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner."
• "Moderation is never applauded for its own sake."
• "The unconscious self it the real genius.  Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it."
• "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
• "The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her."
• "Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
• "Hell is paved with good intentions, not bad ones.  All men mean well."
• "Mutiny Acts are needed only by officers who command without authority.  Divine right needs no whip."
• "No man dares say so much what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist."  (Goodness, isn't that the truth!)
• "Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."
• "Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty.  The cowardly, insubordinate, and the envious share your objections." 
• "America has no Star Chamber, and no feudal barons. But it has Trusts; and it has millionaires whose factories, fenced in by live electric wires and defended by Pinkerton retainers with magazine rifles, would have made a Radical of Reginald Front de Boeuf. Would Washington or Franklin have lifted a finger in the cause of American Independence if they had foreseen its reality?" (Good question).
• "When we learn to sing that Britons never will be masters we shall make an end to slavery." (Again, that goes for Americans too!)