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A List of Holidays Ranked by Awesomeness

In Holidays on October 29, 2011 at 1:11 pm

Columbus Day: Could we please get rid of it? He wasn’t even the first white dude to come to North America. Leif Erikson Day would be much better, as it could be Viking-themed and an excuse to drink mead.

Earth Day: Hooray for having a planet!

President’s Day: We sure do have an Executive Branch!

Memorial Day: There are very real historical/patriotic reasons to celebrate this holiday, but for most people it’s a day off and an excuse to barbecue. It is neither bad, but it is also not mind-blowingly celebratory.

Veteran’s Day: See above.

Labor Day: Basically the same as Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day in terms of non-exciting-ness, but it’s nice to give summer a send off before everything gets all autumnal.

Valentine’s Day: This holiday sucks if you’re single because it’s a reminder of how lonely you are. It also sucks if you’re in a bad relationship because it will remind you of what a horrible train wreck-y failure your love life is. However, if you’re with someone whom you actually like, Valentine’s Day is an excuse to go out to dinner, make googly eyes at each other, and then have sex. That is generally a nice way to spend an evening.

Easter: If you don’t believe in Jesus then Easter is basically an excuse for chocolate. That’s okay if you like chocolate. It’s nice to herald the coming of spring, though, and tell winter to suck it. This holiday may also be referred to as Zombie Jesus Day, which is fun to say and annoys theists.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: Hooray for positive, widespread social change regarding America’s painful, racist past! Seriously, it’s nice to be reminded that we, as a country, can do the right thing from time to time.

St. Patrick’s Day/Cinco de Mayo: These are days where Americans use a nationality as an excuse to drink.

The Fourth of July: This holiday is fun because things blow up, and participants may sing the “AMERICA: FUCK YEAH” song with only slight amounts of irony.

Christmas: The nice thing about Christmas is that lots of people take time off, you can see long-absent friends and relatives, and there is the opportunity to give and receive thoughtful gifts. On the other hand, it’s mandatory family time, gift giving can be stressful and expensive, and annoying music gets piped into retail outlets for the better part of December.

Thanksgiving: Hell yes lots of food!

New Year’s Eve: New Year’s is a pleasant chaser to Christmas. Christmas is mandatory family time, but New Year’s is a big party where you can decompress by getting drunk with your friends. There’s no big, important historical or religious aspect to it- it’s just everyone getting together to watch the calendar flip over like it’s a big odometer. When that happens, there is booze and smooching, both of which are enjoyable.

Halloween: Halloween is the best holiday, and if you say otherwise you’re full of wrong. Halloween is the day/night when everyone gets creative and dresses in a whimsical fashion. We allow ourselves to look, be, and act weird. It’s the day of the year where you drag your strange clothing out of your closet, turn it into a new persona, and act like a different person. Grownups, en masse, play pretend and let their guard down just a little. There are parties and dancing and all kinds of revelry, and you get to embody something that you’re not. Everyone who’s been to one knows that Halloween parties are different from other parties.

We drag out all the fear and weirdness that’s considered odd at other times of the year, and put it front and center, giving it a safe space. What’s more, it happens in autumn, probably the most beautiful time of year. It’s right on the balancing point just before everything gets cold, and the dark time of the year is ushered in with colorful gourds and orange lights. It’s a misty black-and-orange swirl of fun, and it remains the only holiday that I get really, truly excited for.

The Frontiers of Empathy: One Reason Why I Love Science Fiction

In Movies, Science Fiction on October 24, 2011 at 10:44 am

One more thing relating to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, then I swear I have something positive and interesting to say about Occupy Portland. Really. I have not forgotten about that.

At this point, George Lucas has lost nearly all of his credibility as a creator of science fiction. Anymore, he’s thought of as one who despoils wonder as opposed to creating it. I’ve got plenty of antipathy towards Star Wars for lots of reasons, but the thing that made me personally stop looking up to George Lucas as a science fiction creator came just after my senior year of college.

I came home, and a roommate and several of his friends were watching Attack of the Clones. For whatever reason, they had decided to watch it with the commentary on, and Lucas was talking away about whatever happened to be in the frame at that moment. At the point where I came in and idly watched it with them, R2-D2 was flying through a large industrial facility and being pursued by several insect-like aliens called Genosians. Giant gears, conveyor belts, robotic arms, and other factory bits swooped by as R2-D2 evaded his pursuers. On the commentary Lucas said of the Genosians that they were “basically giant mosquitoes.” One of the flying aliens got stuck in some gears or other piece of machinery, and was crunched to death. The scene was played for slapstick-y laughs, and we were supposed to root for R2, who was suddenly able to fly for some reason.

I do not have a philosophical opposition to comic violence, animated mayhem, or laughing at fictional deaths. However, in that moment, I did find Lucas’ attitude towards his alien creations to be flippant and almost rather offensive. I found it astounding that he could imagine the Genosians intelligent enough to create modern industry, but not deserving of empathy or consideration when it came to feeding them into machinery. Certainly Lucas wouldn’t have sent a human careening into gears as a punchline, or called homo sapiens “basically naked monkeys.”

I love science fiction not just because it’s a genre filled with lasers and spaceships (though there is that) but also because it, more than any other form of genre fiction, can challenge and bolster our sense of empathy towards our fellow beings. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was excellent in that the filmmakers had the confidence to get the audience to empathize with a nonhuman protagonist, and a nonhuman cast of supporting characters. While James Franco might have gotten top billing, the real star of the film is Caesar, the CGI ape whose body language and facial expressions were taken from Andy Serkis. Yes, Franco does a fine enough job of being a likable handsome scientist, but the character development that the audience is most concerned with throughout the film belongs to an intelligent animal who says almost nothing. Caesar’s mind, body, and point of view are all unlike ours, yet I found myself deeply interested in the story and emotional life of an intelligent ape, and expanding my definition of who and what I considered a fellow being.

Science fiction does this all of the time. One of the reasons why I maintain that Star Trek will always be superior to Star Wars is that, as cheesy and indulgent as Trek might get it retains a more expansive heart and mind. Spock, Worf, and Data are all nonhuman, yet are among the most beloved characters of the series. They all, for different reasons, have bodies, minds, and emotional lives that our different from our own, yet we are asked to value them as people. What’s more, their different points of view are presented as being inherently valuable, rather than just curiosities. Kirk may disagree with Spock frequently, but he gives the Vulcan his highest regard because he knows that a point of view different from his is often a valuable thing.

Star Wars did have R2 and Chewbacca, but too often they were played only for laughs and never given stories of their own. What’s more, several of the aliens are presented first and foremost as set-dressing. What, after all, does Nien Nunb ever actually do? The emotions that we are most often asked to feel regarding Star Wars’ aliens is nearly always related to their anatomy. We feel disgust at Jabba’s obesity, are impressed with Chewbacca’s strength, and look around with unease at the denizens of the Mos Eisley cantina, a hive of scum and villainy. Seldom are the aliens the source of tragedy, drama, or pathos.

All of our investment and empathy is with Luke, Han, and Leia. Almost never are we asked to reach out in any challenging way to a character not like ourselves. The one major exception is Yoda. Luke must accept him as a Jedi master in the exact same scene that the audience must accept him as something other than comic relief. If George Lucas could have approached all of his aliens with the same humanity that he approached Yoda, I would probably like Star Wars a whole lot more.

Watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes the other night, I was reminded of the heart and mind of science fiction that has continually inspired me to love things like Star Trek, the robot stories of Isaac Asimov, and the wonderfully silent apocalyptic landscapes of WALL-E. Being able to journey to space, or the future, or alternate dimensions is all well and good, but SF, when it has the courage and confidence of its convictions, can also allow us to feel that the Other is not so other, and that even though their communications, trappings, and biology (or lack thereof) may be incomprehensible to us. We must still engage with them as full-fledged players within a drama, and for that time their reality is equal to that of any human character on the page or on the screen.

Going home from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I started thinking about real chimps. In particular, I remembered a This American Life story about a chimp who was raised by humans and then had to integrate herself with chimpanzees. I wondered about the real scientists who had to work with animals that very nearly are intelligent, do form emotional connections with lab workers, and are capable of self-recognition. The chimp who played Cheetah, Tarzan’s companion, apparently enjoyed watching his old movies and could recognize himself on screen. I thought about what it would be like to actually work with animals like that, and what the ethical obligations would be. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about animal rights or issues at all- but that night it was on my mind unavoidably.

It is a wonderful thing that science fiction can do that to us. It can inspire our minds and emotions to suddenly engage in real world issues relating to science, ethics, or philosophy. And it can do so because, at the best of times, it expands our minds rather than merely inflames our emotions, and lets us be magnanimous with our empathy. I suddenly cared about chimps because I cared about Caesar.

If we can care about the alien, the robot, the mutant, or the genetically altered intelligent animal, then we can surely experience empathy towards another human being whose national origin, religion, or ideology is different than ours. If we can find ourselves engaged with the issues of, say, apes, then we can find ourselves engaged with the issues that are of concern to our real-life neighbors. That may sound idealistic, and it is. However, I believe in the power of fiction, and know that it can do much more than simply entertain.

In Which I Greatly Enjoy an Ape Uprising, But Am Bothered By Hollywood Geography

In San Francisco, Science Fiction on October 22, 2011 at 11:15 am

I finally saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes last night, and quite liked it. Much more than I thought, actually. The big climactic battle scene on the Golden Gate Bridge was probably the most entertaining thing I’ve seen on a movie screen in some time. A gorilla totally messes up a helicopter, and it’s spectacular.

Also, Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance as Caesar, the chimp protagonist, was absolutely brilliant. The movie won my respect in that it told a story about a character who communicated almost entirely using facial expressions and body language. Caesar was vivid and well defined in the same way that WALL-E was, in that the filmmakers were forced to show, not tell. RotPotA uses CGI to tell a story, not to simply dazzle the viewer with effects.

That said, I had two small, quibbling issues with the movie. The first was a dumb, tacked-on story about humanity getting wiped out by an artificial supervirus, as opposed to a nuclear war, like in the original movies. This plot element takes place almost entirely after the credits, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hastily added in post-production as a rushed afterthought.

The other issue, though, was about San Franciscan geography. I enjoyed that the movie took place in a real American city as opposed to Any Town, U.S.A. What’s more, it took place in San Francisco, where I’ve spent a fair amount of time, and the big fight scene was on one of my favorite landmarks.

What bothered, me, though, was that my familiarity with San Franciscan geography kind of impeded my enjoyment of the movie. Towards the climax, Caesar and his gang of simian compatriots break out of a primate holding facility in San Bruno, south of San Fancisco. They climb up a hill and then look over the city.

After that, they’re suddenly breaking apes out of the San Francisco zoo. The zoo is on the western side of SF’s peninsula. According to Google maps it’s about twelve miles away from San Bruno. It sort of strains credibility that a horde of apes could go twelve miles in a big city and not be noticed, but okay…

Then, suddenly, they’re in downtown SF, up in the NE corner of the city. That’s about eight miles away. So, at this point the apes have covered over twenty miles of territory in a single afternoon, and so far not much of a response. As they are messing up downtown, Caesar espies the mighty Golden Gate Bridge.

I want to emphasize that even as I’m picking it apart, I really enjoyed the hell out of this movie. When the Golden Gate comes into the frame, though it’s as if the director is saying “Apes! To the widely recognized national landmark! Let’s have the climax THERE!” Because the climax couldn’t happen on Market Street or something. No one recognizes that.

The Golden Gate isn’t really near Downtown SF, though. The apes have to go another four miles through the Presido to get there. We don’t see that. It’s just downtown San Francisco and then BOOM! Golden Gate.t be on, you know, Market Street or something. It has to be on a landmark. If anyone were to ever bother with filming a movie in South Dakota, you can bet that the ultimate fight scene would take place at Mount Rushmore.

After that the apes are instantly in the Muir Woods, about ten miles away. I know I’m a stickler here, but quite frankly a horde of apes could not successfully cross through over forty miles of a populated area. The movie was so good, though, that I (almost) didn’t care.

I realize that movies and TV compress geography. In RotPatA, San Bruno, the zoo, downtown, and the Golden Gate are all close by because they need to be for the plot to happen. I get that. I also get that people who live in New York or LA are probably annoyed by how Hollywood has crunched and mangled their geography to a weird degree, with characters probably showing up at vastly unrelated locations on a regular basis.

This almost, almost makes me want to watch Zero Effect or Foxfire, just so I can see how movies have similarly cut up and re-edited Portland’s streets. Probably horribly, because no one out side of this city would care where things actually are.

The George R. R. Martin Drinking Game

In Books, Fantasy on October 11, 2011 at 7:59 pm

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally, finally, finally finished all of the presently existing Song of Ice and Fire books. I reread the entire series this year in preparation for A Dance With Dragons. It took me a while not because I don’t enjoy the series (I do) but as much as I love it, I often got distracted and had to read something else. The characters, plot, world and story of aSoIaF are absolutely splendid, but every so often I needed to stuff something else into my brain.

In particular, because Martin has turns of phrase that he uses over and over again in a highly characteristic way. I suspect he’s doing this purposefully, in emulation of the habits of Classical poets. Most translations of the Odyssey have turns of phrase like “the wine-dark sea,” “the grey-eyed goddess Athena,” and “the Earth that feeds us all” popping up over and over again. The explanation I always got for this is that epics were initially unwritten, and repetition like this made it easier for the poet to recall giant stories from memory.

Phrases like this pop up so often in Martin that one could easily make a drinking game out of them, as well as other Martin-isms. I don’t think this is a mark of poor writing, but it is highly noticeable and occasionally does take me out of the book a bit. Seeing repeated phrases is kind of like seeing the zipper on a movie monster’s costume. Every so often, I wanted other words banging around inside my brain and I had to take a break. The next time you feel like reading giant fantasy novels and imbibing booze, try drinking every time you read:

  • Milk of the poppy
  • Little and less
  • Much and more
  • Mulled wine
  • Leal service
  • Sweet sister
  • Wedded and bedded
  • Just so
  • It is known
  • Mummer’s farce
  • Useless as nipples on a breastplate
  • Where do whores go
  • Stick them with the pointy end
  • I know, I know, oh, oh, oh
  • Any variation of “waddle”
  • Hands of gold are always cold
  • Half a hundred
  • Our friends of Frey
  • Bent the knee
  • Any reference to mail, wool, and boiled leather in any combination
  • Any reference to Valyrian steel
  • Any reference to a blade being “so sharp you could shave with it.”
  • Any reference to the Mother being merciful
  • Any reference to the Crone’s wisdom
  • Any reference to the Father’s judgement
  • Any reference to or recitation of The Bear and the Maiden Fair
  • Any reference to The Rains of Castamere
  • Any reference to Arya being “[adjective] as a [noun]”
  • Any gratuitous description of heraldry
  • Any gratuitous description of food
  • Any time characters are referred to by their sigils, e.g, “Wolves” or “Lions”
  • Any cryptic invocation of Summerhall
  • Words are wind
  • A Lannister always pays his debts
  • Dark wings, dark words
  • The night is dark and full of terrors
  • Winter is coming

And of course, you should take a big old swig from whatever you’re imbibing every time a major character dies. Or supposedly dies. Or ends their POV chapter on an annoying cliffhanger. If you do that, you will be good and drunk, and swaying from side to side.

Be advised that if you keep doing that for more than twenty pages you will get alcohol poising and then you will die.

(Did I miss any? There are probably plenty more. Also, I’m really looking forward to The Winds of Winter.)

PSA: Guy Fawkes Was Kind of a Jerkface

In Politics, Rants on October 7, 2011 at 4:43 pm

I’ll have a much longer (and more positive) essay/post about Occupy Portland soon, but first I want to allow myself a little mini-rant about something that’s been bothering me.

My fellow disaffected Americans: Can we please stop it with the Guy Fawkes masks? You know the ones I mean. These:

(Also, the whole black bandanna thing is also kind of silly.)

I have a number of gripes with these. They are thus:

1: Guy Fawkes wasn’t a liberal crusader for the rights of the people. He was a Catholic radical who wanted to blow up the English Parliament as part of an elaborate plot to increase the power of the Catholic Church in England. Parliaments (English and otherwise) are places where deliberation and democracy happen. Representatives of the people debate, argue, and generally hash things out in the messy process of legislation and then make laws. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what the Catholic Church does. That’s an organization where all the rules are made by old celibate guys in robes- hardly a paragon of democracy. Guy Fawkes would have gladly exploded the former to help the latter.

2: He wanted to blow up a goddamn building. That’s not cool. People who want to make London go “BOOM” should not be role models.

3: If we really want protests and popular movements like Occupy Wall Street and its various offshoots to be successful, they have to be persuasive to middle-class Americans. If Mr. and Mrs. Middle class are watching the news at night and they see the protests are populated by a bunch of masked (or bandanna-ed) freaks, they are much more likely to go “pish-posh!” and dismiss the substance of the movement out of hand. However, if they see a bunch of people with whom they identify, they are more likely pay attention the substance of what’s going on.

If you show up looking like a costumed freak with a sign, then lots of people will just see you as a costumed freak. If you show up in normal clothes and a sign, though, then you’re an American with something to say. That’s hardly fair, but it is how things are.

4: V For Vendetta is not Alan Moore’s best work, and the movie isn’t that great. Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, and even The Killing Joke are all way better. Vendetta’s good (it is Alan Moore, after all) but if we’re going to drag comic book imagery into politics, can it at least be stuff from a better graphic novel?

That is all. I’ll have a more positive post soon.

 

In Which I Learn That Kenny G is Objectively Bad

In Music on October 2, 2011 at 4:38 pm

The other day I had some time between work events, and decided to recline and read in the lobby of my company’s office building. There’s a cafe down there, and they have a number of comfortable couches and nice chairs.

“I know,” I said to myself, “I shall get myself a coffee, and proceed to imbibe a favorite beverage while reading and relaxing on one of those several very nice pieces of butt-bearing furniture.”

I bought a coffee, sat down, opened my book, and began to read. Unfortunately, this was not a process that kept happening. My enjoyment of the delicious coffee and the engagement with the ripping yarn open before me were interrupted by the hideously bad music that was playing in the cafe. Normally, I like cafe music. Most Portland baristas have fairly good taste, and I have no objection to, say, the solo works of Brian Eno playing away whilst I while away my time sipping a roasty stimulant.

This music, however, was not something that I could either enjoy or tune out. It was a hideous form of dominating sound that could perhaps be described as “jazz.” A saxophone warbled away, and in the background the undriving beat of automated non-drums disrupted both concentration, disengagement, and all states in between. I tried to ignore it.

I attempted to concentrate on things like the taste of delicious coffee, and the various plot twists of my book. That, however, proved difficult. The hideous muzak-jazz permeated the whole of the environment, and I began shifting uncomfortably on the comfy chair where I sat.

The track ended. I was glad.

Another track just like it started. It was more than I could take. The hideous saxophone was back and I couldn’t concentrate on my coffee, book, or anything. The only thing I wanted to do was murder the music with something pointy.

I tried to tough it out. I lasted for another track, and then, after that, something I recognized came on. It was this.

I immediately recognized the horrible strains of Kenny G’s biggest “hit,” Songbird. Suddenly, I was very happy. Not because Kenny G was playing- I was still perturbed by that, but because I had one of my biases confirmed. I learned that Kenny G is objectively bad.

I didn’t know that the offensive music had been a Kenny G album. But, I did hate it. I hated it stripped of context and presentation, stripped of personality and adornment. It was nice to know that I don’t think that Kenny G is a horrible musician (and probably a horrible person) because he has stupid hair or because middlebrow suburban Applebee’s customers enjoy him. I don’t hate him because it’s cool to hate him or because he’s an easy target. Suffering through his music, and not knowing it was his, taught me that Kenny G is objectively bad. All things being equal, his music is bad music.

It’s a rare opportunity to have one’s opinions stripped of context and tested. That cafe, though, gave me the opportunity to evaluate something I hate on a totally level playing field. Even on a level playing field, I learned that it was still awful.

Moments like that are great and valuable- finding an opinion confirmed, denied, or changed when context has been stripped away. It’s a rare thing to evaluate something in and of itself, and I walked to my next work function happily knowing that i gleefully hated Kenny G.