Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
The power of the Celeron compels you!
HA! See? A flash-blocking plugin has been created, just like I said it would.
I now predict that I will be hired by the New Yorker. And someone will give me a pony.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 0 comments
My coworker discovers my secret shame
Guess I shouldn't have made fun of her handwriting like that.
14:32 x Thomas x /bank/experience/personal x link x 1 comment
In order to move the previous self-promoting post down the page, I now submit the following script, which I wrote about a year ago after watching Darkness Falls. The movie was so bad, and so ruined its premise of the Tooth Fairy gone bad, that I decided to redo the first scene my way. I called the result "Baby Teeth."
BEGINNING CREDITS--A NIN-STYLE MONTAGE OF TEETH AND PICTURES OF TEETH, SURROUNDED BY MONEY AND SMEARS OF DARK LIQUID
SCENE - ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YARD - DAY
The kids are at recess. A number of them, six or seven, have gathered by the slide, which is not much used, because these are fifth graders and they are getting a little big for it.
As the camera moves closer, we see that the group arranged in a semicircle, focusing on one girl with bright red hair and a deadly serious expression. One of her eyes is just enough off center to make her gaze difficult to meet. Finally, the camera drops level with her head--we are now one of the kids hanging on her every word.
He punches another boy on the sleeve and runs, taking most of the group with him. Melanie stays by the slide, watching them with her off-center eyes. As one of the boys runs by the swings, he trips on a loose patch of gravel and face-plants. We get a close-up view as he lifts his head, an expression of shock on his face. He looks down. A single tooth lies between his hands, and a shadow falls over him. It's one of the teachers supervising recess.
The blood drains from Robert's face. He gets up, cradling the tooth and stares up at her.
SCENE - ROBERT'S BEDROOM - NIGHT
Robert climbs into bed, looking very small compared to the room. His parents say their goodnights and hit the light switch, leaving the room only half-lit. The room is a mess of dark shapes against the white wallpaper. Against the wall opposite the door is a giant toybox, not a solid cube, but made of sturdy wooden rods. It is half-full of stuffed animals. Robert rolls over, clearly trying to force himself to sleep. One hand reaches under the pillow, Robert stiffens, and the hand re-emerges with a single tooth in it. He stares at it, then closes it tightly in a fist and clenches his eyes shut. We pan upwards, first looking barely over the boy's head, and watch the door swing silently shut. As we continue upward, we gradually reveal a dark, hunched figure standing in front of the doorway.
The shape begins to move forward. We can't see much--it's scarier that way. We can hear something soft and almost insectile, but the outline of the shape flutters and moves, as if loose cloth is draped over it. Robert's eyes flash open. He bolts upright and SCREAMS as he catches sight of the thing. Reflexively, his hand flies open, launching the tooth across the room. The shape moves, as if following its trajectory, and launches itself after the tooth. Robert leaps in the opposite direction, a quick close-up flashing his panicked eyes to the camera as he searches for refuge.
There! The toybox! Robert flings open the top, which has a strap running through the bars for a handle, and crawls inside, pulling the lid shut over top of himself. He clings desparately to the strap.
BAM! The dark figure drops in front of him. It is only slightly bigger than he is, and we can see its shapeless form a little more clearly now, but it only confirms that whatever moves under the torn and tattered shroud is not remotely human. It sniffs at the bars of the toybox. One claw is extended, and in a mocking gesture taps on the lid. Robert shakes his head.
The shape cocks its head, and a stray beam of light falls across the lower part of what should be a face. The surface is mottled, grimy, and slick, but then it cracks and we see--with growing horror--that the thing is SMILING. Its smile has far too many teeth, some new and some decaying, but clearly they are all different, as if from different mouths. Prominently displayed in front is Robert's lost tooth, now wedged into the maw.
The shape taps the lid again, then turns and vanishes in another swift leap. There is a pause, and the camera moves in on Robert as he tries to sink into the toybox. In the background, we hear that odd insectile movement, a door opening, and the mixed screams of a man and a woman in horrible pain. The door slams, but the screams continue. We pull in on Robert as he pulls his eyes tightly closed, choking off the sobs that are coating his cheeks in tears. Finally, the screams end, and a low, inhuman chuckle rings through the house.
FADE TO BLACK
14:01 x Thomas x /fiction/screenplay x link x 1 comment
Nobody expects the multinational inquisition!
"We looking for someone who can handle eldritch powers beyond the ken of mortal man, and also Dreamweaver MX."
Today is an interview day, on top of the Annual Meetings and my freelance writing duties. I'm very busy, and there won't be any writing today.
"I see that you're an expert in underwater basket weaving. Would you mind telling us a little about that?"
In the meantime, please enjoy The Aristocrats.
"How do you feel about long, irregular hours of boring work for little or no pay? We may also require you to wear a tiny hat for our own amusement."
Wish me luck!
05:36 x Thomas x /meta/announce/delays x link x 1 comment
Movie Review: Six String Samurai
Six String Samurai isn't a hard movie to describe, technically. The idea is that America got nuked at the beginning of the cold war. Forty years later, the resulting wasteland is populated by strange gangs like the bowling-themed Pin Pals and cannibalistic nuclear families (pardon the pun). Out of this setting walks the nameless samurai of the title, wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a tuxedo, carrying a katana and a beautiful hollowbody '57 Gibson. Death follows him (literally, Death is portrayed as three Cowboys from Hell led by a Slash lookalike), as does a fearsome reputation.
The samurai is trying to get to Lost Vegas, which was previously ruled by the King--but Elvis has now terminally left the building, and the samurai wants to take his place. In an homage to Lone Wolf and Cub, he's joined early on by a young orphan boy (also nameless), with whom he has a contentious relationship. Together, they travel across the satirical landscape, forming a father-son bond despite themselves.
It's not a hard movie to describe, but that doesn't mean it necessarily makes any sense. By the time that the pair finishes their trip, they've defied Death, wandered the desert, stolen cars, and singlehandedly defeated a sword-wielding Soviet army. If you stop to think about any of the plot twists for too long, you'll miss the point. From its overdubbed voices, to its blatant abuse of slow motion, to its stoic protagonist, this is a loving--if twisted--sendup of the samurai genre, with Rock replacing the Bushido code as its center.
The cinematography is gorgeous, and the sound direction, once you get used to it, is perfectly fitting. Particularly noteworthy is the score, much of which was written and performed by the Red Elvises, a Russian rock band with a cameo during the first ten minutes. If I had to say it resembles anything, I'd compare it to Robert Rodriguez's work with Desparado and Once Upon A Time in Mexico: it's a glorious mess of spaghetti western and surf rock.
Not everything in Six String Samurai flows smoothly. Some of the fight scenes are overly long, and the ending is a little bit of a cheat (although it's a pretty cute cheat--let's just say it twists the movie's references on their head). You'll need to be the kind of person who enjoys this kind of bizarre, anything-goes filmmaking, and it helps to have a background in the classics of the genre. With those caveats, this is the most fun I've had from a Netflix rental in a while.
23:29 x Thomas x /movies/reviews/cult x link x 1 comment
I love my laptop. It is old, and weighs a ton. I bought it in 1999, and it arrived on September 9th, when the news thought that the Internet was going to blow up completely (9/9/99). Back then, laptops only came as big black squares, which I've now covered in all kinds of stickers (sample: "NOTICE ALL MONEY REMOVED FROM THIS MACHINE DAILY"). Three years ago the battery lost its memory and I could only plug it into the wall. A few months ago, I bought it a new battery and a wifi card, and since then I've really started to enjoy having a midway machine between my PocketPC and Samedi, my desktop. These old machines are great, because the chips are so low-power--I get five hours unplugged at least, even with the network card running.
For most tasks, a 366MHz Celeron does everything I need it to do (how much power do I need for Notepad?), but there's one job in which it's rapidly losing ground: web browsing. To me, that's pretty funny. I always figured that it wouldn't ever take much for a system to do web and e-mail--the same kind of basic tasks that my grandma buys a computer to take care of. Instead, the Flash being used on some web pages has become so elaborate (including streaming video, complicated animations, and interactivity) that it drags my poor laptop to a halt.
It's like the popup hassle made new all over again. Sooner or later, it'll start annoying people on better machines, and browsers will start offering options to throttle Flash. Can't happen soon enough, as far as I'm concerned. Does anyone ever actually watch those little streaming movies? Was that ever supposed to be a good idea?
Give it a rest, guys. Let a picture say a thousand words.
10:53 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 1 comment
Gamer's Quarter #3 is now available. You can grab it here. I won't have a chance to read it until much later tonight, but it looks like there are a couple of interesting articles. Favorite title: "A Calculated Assault on Starcraft and All It Stands For."
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/media/online x link x 0 comments
Today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day
Arr.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/comedy_and_tragedy x link x 0 comments
Here's the problem with Vanessa Schneider: despite all appearances, she's got no rhythm.
P.N. 03 is a game that should have had musical aspirations. The heroine, Ms. Schneider has a battlesuit with the glossy white texture of an iPod and a pair of earphones that constantly pump bass-heavy techno. The environments surrounding her look like a Bjork video. All of her moves are stylized and dance-like--even when she's standing still, her body twitches with the beat. And the enemies she faces are predictable, repetitive robots acting in patterns. Surely this is a game with a groove.
But the elements never gel. Everything in P.N. 03 tries to be centered around a techno aesthetic, when it should be centered around the beat itself. So where the music should act as a hub, there's only an empty space, and you're left with an avatar who doesn't control well, environments that can't hold interest, and enemies that kill you the same way, over and over and over again. The game flies apart like clay on a turbocharged spinning wheel.
For obvious reasons, music games are near and dear to my heart. I first stepped on a DDR machine while in Xi'an, and when I stepped back off (surrounded by politely voyeuristic Zhongguoren staring at the White boy with the grin and the Chuck Taylors) it had been a real revelation for me. It was the same giddy feeling I'd had when I stepped into an arcade for the first time. I suggest that we need more music games--not so much with scrolling arrows, but with that same visceral pull.
We've reached the point where music is a part of games the same way it's part of movies--we mainly notice when it's done badly. Will Smith or Nick Cage reaches for a gun, something explodes in slow motion, and Michael Bay triggers the same march music that he's been using for ten years now, thus proving finally that if a thousand monkeys were put behind a thousand video cameras they still couldn't make something worse than Armageddon. It's laughable--and then we play Halo and (for all its cleverness and skill in execution) no-one so much as chuckles at the men's choir swelling behind the ridiculous majesty of your pulse rifle.
...Forgive the phallic nature of the image. But you see what I'm trying to say.
Where were we? P.N. 03. Right. Like most games, it doesn't use music of a game in any way other than as background and a mood-booster, even while it's clearly trying to do more. But why is this, exactly? Why is it that sound in games has to be like the walls of a pre-Half-Life shooter: no matter what you do, you just can't leave a mark? And their composition is always the same, so your tactics share their immutability.
Some people get it. I've never played Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Rez, but his Meteos reacts to the player--joining the puzzle pieces triggers chords, sound effects, and other parts of the music. The effect isn't much more than the beeps of Space Invaders, but it adds just as much to the game as the visuals of the different planets. I would have taken even just that level of involvement from P.N. 03--the game's bullets move slowly enough that a clever designer could even have cued more elaborate musical sequences in response. Give me a soundtrack that reacts to my every move--uses that same cue system to encourage play to match--and I could forgive the sluggish controls, the Death Star interiors, and the repetitive enemies. Like P-Funk, I'll put up with a lot for the sake of a good groove.
It's been almost five years since Jet Grind Radio kicked out the jams on the Dreamcast. When the game fades into the past, the reputation that remains will be its cel-shaded graphics--and they are extraordinary, no doubt. When someone mentions the music, it'll be for its j-pop flavor--and it is extraordinary, as well. Nonetheless, the reason I still snap the disc into its little white console is because of the extraordinary way that it mixed that j-pop from track to track on the fly, complete with DJ-scratches and interplay between the songs. You really have to hear it to understand: JGR lets you grind down the side of a building, spray paint in hand, and if Guitar Vader st-st-st-stutters in just as you hit the ground: even without any actual interaction between player and soundtrack, you feel a little bit more punk. No chorus necessary.
Well, that's an experience I think we need more often. We need more music games--not in the DDR all-about-the-music sense, but to the effect that the music becomes an interactive part of the gameplay along with the visuals and the feel of the controls. It won't show up in a screenshot, and many players may not even notice the change. It certainly won't feed the designer's Quentin Tarantino fetish. It will have players tapping their feet while they're tapping the buttons, and any musician can tell you how addictive that becomes.
And a-one, two, a-one two three four--
Who else wants to talk?
09:56 x Thomas x /gaming/roundtable x link x 1 comment
There's a new block on the sidebar for Detours (label subject to change if I think of something more clever), which are my pet projects at other domain names. You're already familiar with Four String Riot, but I'm also including my portfolio, located at ThomasWilburn.net. Yes, that is my real name, and yes, it makes me a little nervous to put that out. Since work is gearing up in preparation for the Bank's Annual Meetings I probably won't be posting here as much for a couple weeks at least, so if you want to amuse yourself reading through my old work there, go right ahead. TW.net hasn't been updated in quite a while, but I've got some good fiction (and some not-so-good), a bit of artwork, old programs I've written, and a sampling of my journalism work for the Washington Asia Press. If there's anything that particularly strikes your fancy or your righteous indignation, comments are always welcome.
12:32 x Thomas x /meta/announce/changes x link x 1 comment
Leonard Mackerton is the world's worst venture capitalist. He stands in front of the CEO and Board of Directors for Sanctified Steaks, Incorporated. His ill-fitted suit is even more depressing because it was custom-measured and tailored for Leonard--but he just has one of those bodies on which nothing will ever hang gracefully. You could put a silk toga on Leonard Mackerton, and he would look like someone had wrapped him in a beaten tarpaulin.
By contrast, the CEO of SS, Inc. looks relatively refined. Despite his wealth and power, Mr. Roquefort is not a bad man, and he uncomfortably glances around the room before raising his hand slightly. "Um," he says. "Let me see if we have this straight, Leonard:"
"You want to take all the bits of the cow that we don't use, squeeze them into tubes of indiscriminate flesh, and then offer them to our customers as a light meal?"
"Exactly!" cries Leonard. "Even better: put them on a piece of bread--or two pieces!--and add ketchup! It's handheld, it's easy to make, and it's cheap. It's like a donut hole, for meat. You'll make millions! We'll--" he adds slyly "--make millions."
Roquefort sighs and, again, looks around the room. No-one is going to rescue him from this one. He takes a drink of water.
"You've heard of hot dogs, right, Leonard?"
Leonard looks puzzled. "I'm not following you." One of the board members begins snickering softly behind his hand.
"Hot dogs. Frankfurters. Meat products that are sold on a bun, with condiments."
"Yes, yes," says Leonard. "I know, hot dogs. But seriously: what about my idea?"
The CEO leans forward. "We'll be in touch." he says, and nods Security forward.
10:36 x Thomas x /fiction/micro x link x 1 comment
I have a notes.txt file on my PocketPC where I keep all of the random ideas and brainstorms that pop into my head. I haven't really cleaned it out in years, and I have no idea where some of this stuff came from.
So for the last week I've been trying to write a short story around one line that's sitting there: "like a donut hole for meat." And it's hopeless. I'm going to give it another shot later today or tonight, but in the meantime, if you're feeling creative, give it a shot for yourself in the comments.
14:44 x Thomas x /fiction/micro x link x 1 comment
Graphic Novel Review: Global Frequency: Planet Ablaze and Detonation Radio
There are a thousand and one people on the global frequency, each an expert in his or her field and ready at a moments notice to rescue people from threats that no-one else could handle. It's a brilliant premise by Warren Ellis, and it lets him play with the conventions of comic books--each issue is drawn by a different artist, has a unique and unconnected plot, and even a new cast. There are only two recurring characters: the leader of Global Frequency, Miranda Zero, and her assistant/coordinator, Aleph. Everything else is new with each episode.
Unfortunately, the quality can vary from issue to issue as well. The artwork ranges from fairly traditional four-color pieces to beautiful painted or inked panels. Of the former, Simon Bisley's "Detonation" stands out. Lee Bermejo's shaded work (which doesn't seem to be titled) is stunningly rendered, but Jon Muth's "Big Sky" really goes above and beyond, with its rough black inks scraped across the page like a sumi-e painting. Unfortunately, Ellis's writing for that issue can't keep up, a problem that often undermines Global Frequency.
You certainly can't accuse the creators for lacking ambition. The whole project is an unconventional idea that tries to fit in lots of other oddities. But sometimes those concepts get away from them--or worse, turn out to be not so mind-boggling after all. The "Superviolence" issue collected in Detonation Radio is just one big fist-fight, taken to sick Comics Code-busting extremes, but it simply doesn't flow well enough--or differentiate between the combatants--to be anything but a muddled, confused mess. "Big Sky" is like an X-Files episode where the magic turns out to be something disarmingly mundane, and it never gets up enough momentum to make the mystery satisfying when it's solved.
But when the writing and the art work together, Global Frequency is a great example of comics written for adults, not for superhero-obsessed fans. "The Run" introduces the audience to the city-running sport of le parkour, and pairs it with smart dialogue. "Hundred" works as an over-the-top action movie, with plenty of guns and gore that rivals even Ellis's own Authority. And some of the characterizations are brilliant, like the Russian hitman in "Detonation":
"Did you ever have a nightmare about a large man who killed your parents, and your siblings, and then your lover, and then everyone you know? And then burned your house down and destroyed everything precious you ever conceived of? That was me."
Warren Ellis is one of the few comics writers whose graphic novels I regularly buy. His Transmetropolitan is a brilliant and hyperactive political satire, and The Authority betrays his glee at destroying as much of superhero comics as he can. But it's also obvious that as an author he sometimes gets stuck on an idea long after he should have let it go--Stormwatch previews the plot and themes of Authority, and the archetypal smartass Ellis stand-in (Jenny Sparks, Spider Jerusalem, and to some degree Miranda Zero) can get old quickly. That's one reason while I've always admired Planetary as perhaps his best work--the cast is interesting without being transparent, and the writing is more even along the story arc.
Global Frequency and Planetary are similar in structure, but in stepping away from the superhero deconstruction GF takes more risks. Ultimately, it's a fascinating experiment that may be too chaotic for the average reader. If you're interested in sampling the books, the first volume (Planet Ablaze) is probably a little bit better than the second.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/reviews/ellis x link x 0 comments
It is appalling that some people consider the entire political system nothing but an empty stage, and refuse to participate. It is even more disturbing, as Madmunk finds, when someone actually tries to create an argument for their fictional issue (the "death" tax) by summoning the spectre of a fictional character (Batman):
In that spirit, and to tide you over until I find the time for writing with actual substance, I offer the following three excerpts from the culture war, showing the true conservative allegiances of time-honored fiction.
"They were probably sour anyway, right?" asked a passing bear.
"Actually," said the fox, "grapes that high could only be the work of an intelligent designer. Why won't the schools teach the controversy?"
00:00 x Thomas x /politics/wingnuts/satire x link x 0 comments
He's been playing traditional Chinese fiddle outside the Farragut West metro stop every now and then for a couple of weeks. There's an amplifier in that cart, and he plays over a background CD of flute tunes. It sounds like the music Zhang Laoshi used to play when we did Tai Chi class, but I'm not exactly an expert. I dropped him a buck, and it looked like he was doing all right. Good for him.
22:33 x Thomas x /dc/photos x link x 1 comment
From world-famous Four String Riot Studios...
There's a new original up at Four String Riot. I played this one out at Stacy's this week, and it seemed to go over well. Note for equipment nerds: it uses the Play Once function of the DL-4, which I hope to exploit more as I become more familiar with it.
Also note that I'm not really happy with the recording quality on any of these, which I think comes from recording into a laptop soundcard. The vocals are flattened, and no matter what I do there's a lot of top-end distortion. It makes it really hard to care about fixing the little mistakes that I've left in, when I know it's still going to sound like a 4-track. Swapping the mixer or the mixing software doesn't seem to change anything. This winter I'm going to try to grab one of these TonePort things from Line6 and see if a good USB preamp will solve the problem.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording/mp3 x link x 0 comments
Amuse yourself at the DC Metro station this Friday
Step 1: Get a CD or mp3 player.
Step 2: Find yourself a copy of The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. Take a moment to enjoy the lingering perfume of copyright infringement lawsuits.
Step 3: Start the song, and then stand at the top of the metro escalators, looking longingly down at the sullen passengers as they ride to the top. Hope you don't get maced.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/comedy_and_tragedy x link x 0 comments
Look, I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the Hurricane. I'm not typically a very good person at long distance compassion, and I don't watch TV news, so it's been hard for me to get worked up about it. But clearly, this is a disaster. The more I read about it (and let me assure you that Boing Boing's other posts on the subject are equally horrifying), the angrier I get. I'm going to have to stop, at some point, or I'll never get anything done.
The next time I post, I'm sure I'll resume the lighter (or at least less lethally dangerous) topics that I'm known for: music, games, books, and other assorted frivolities. But in the meantime, I've donated to the Red Cross, even though I understand that they're not being allowed into the area for some unbelievably stupid and corrupt reason. I gave directly, but if you're one of my fellow partisans and you feel like hitting with a little extra oomph, there's a Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief that's trying to hit a million.
They need the money. I know I've seen other people trying to send school supplies, food, and other physical artifacts down to New Orleans. If you're thinking about donating to that kind of effort, let me ask you: please, don't. Give money instead. Money is flexible. Money can be reallocated and spent where organizations need it. Money can be used to get physical items from closer to the disaster, which not only helps the people who receive them, it also hopefully helps that local economy. See this Boing Boing post for someone who explains these facts, as well as links to NGOs that need help.
And on a personal note, the way that this has been bungled simply makes me furious. FEMA is pointing people toward religious organizations run by (of all people) Pat Roberson. Halliburton has been hired for cleanup. It took days for Bush to leave the Ranch, Cheney's still on vacation, and Condi Rice decided to go shoe shopping instead of stepping into a leadership role. I know that my parents may read this, and I apologize for the language, but it must be said and I can't find any other words to express it: Bush must be impeached for his fucking incompetence, and as much of his administration must be fired as is possible.
The time has come to face the corruption and the pathology of the Bush administration. Their reaction to Katrina has shown us just how little they really care for anything other than themselves and their bank accounts. Unfortunately, thousands will die as a result of this misanthropy. Those responsible must pay. Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Fire Rice and Rumsfeld. If necessary, burn the Hill to the ground. We are not safe while these criminal goatfuckers remain in office.
19:51 x Thomas x /politics/national/executive x link x 1 comment
Observations after watching The Grudge in Spanish
(don't ask)
00:00 x Thomas x /movies/commentary/translation x link x 0 comments
On a lighter note, I've pretty much finished Four String Riot.com, which will be my clearinghouse for the solo act's gig schedules and .mp3 files. Right now you can find a recording of "Vooodoo Funk" in its final form, along with a very rough version of the Talking Heads' "Naive Melody." As soon as I get some time this week, I'll put up another original or two, and I'll work out the last few kinks with the Blosxom plugins for gig notices. At that point, if you want to know where to hear the Pretentious Solo Project, you'll know where to go.
What I won't be doing is adding more depth to the site. I like it just as a front page, a handy URL to toss at people who only want very specific information. If I feel the need to clutter the Internets with descriptions of my gear, my recording process, or my thoughts on the industry, I'll write it here, and possibly toss a link up over there.
Since it may take a couple of days to get everything running perfectly over there, I'll go ahead and announce here that I plan to play at both Stacy's and Dremo's again this week. The details are somewhere in the archives if you don't already have them. Think of it as a scavenger hunt. Ready... go!
I'll be adding a permanent link to 4SR on the side as soon as I'm fully satisfied with it, along with my portfolio site (which is long overdue for revision). My pseudonymous friend is right: anonymity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
11:11 x Thomas x /meta/announce/changes x link x 1 comment
I guess it was a couple of weeks ago that so-called researchers scratched themselves and announced that genetically speaking, women just ain't too good with the thinkin's. As that link to Alternet notes, this study is partly the work of Richard Lynn, a white supremacist and scholar of dubious virtue, if any. I love the fact that two of his other works include "The Intelligence of the Mongoloids" and "Positive Correlations Between Head Size and IQ." My girlfriend will be proud to know that the latter, if true, makes her smarter than just about anyone else I know.
My progressive female counterparts appear to be able to handle themselves just fine, which is no surprise to anyone. But isn't it interesting that just after Lynn clawed his way back out from under his rock, his protege Charles Murray also decided to expose his pasty skin to the light (or, considering that the link leads to Commentary Magazine, the dim flourescence of cave fungi)? Wherever Murray goes, he drags The Bell Curve along with him, allowing the Right to insist that it's not racism, it's genetics! And then Katrina has hit, and all of a sudden there are an awful lot of commenters along the same lines--those people wouldn't be poor and flooded and dying and looting if they weren't so intrinsically and genetically inferior.
Isn't that a funny little coincidence, how those two popped up together?
Well, maybe not. At least, it's no great shock to me. It's been pretty clear for some time that racism in America is alive and well. Like all creatures engaged in a Darwinian battle for survival, it has altered itself significantly in response to competitive pressures (I highly recommend Jon Ronson's Them! on the topic), but it's still here. The Bell Curve, like Intelligent Design is another attempt to shoehorn 18th century thought into 20th century science. And as much as I like to pretend that it's just the mouthbreathers with the sheets and the crosses and the GOP membership cards, there are an awful lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum (albeit increasingly common to the rightwards) who are uncomfortably thrilled at the idea.
If you're interested in the original debunking of The Bell Curve you might do well to see Eric Alterman's three-part miniseries (here, here, and here), which covers the basics. Steve Gilliard also covers Curve-apologist and idiot-compulsive Andrew Sullivan, who originally pitched the book while editing The New Republic. Steve mentions an angle that has always seemed a little suspicious to me as well--the fact that these studies always manage to confirm social prejudices, down to the slightest detail.
After all, wouldn't it be amusing if it worked the other way? If the implicit Eurocentrism of these "studies" was turned on its head? Say that (instead of results denouncing Black deviation) scholars released papers talking about how White people have a lower-than-normal level of sexual attractiveness, and tend to be weaker or clumsier than other people. When you stop using "White" as a synonym for "normal," you start to realize just how far out these claims really must be. Because the average cracker, myself included, has a subconscious adverse reaction to that kind of challenge to our hegemony, don't we?
The New Racism doesn't want to say that Blacks and other minorities should be shipped back to their home countries or treated as second-class citizens. No, heaven forbid! The end goal is perhaps more insidious. It says that the stereotypes about minorities are correct, and fit the current status quo--and because those stereotypes are genetically-determined and immutable, we should make no effort to fix the resulting injustices. In fact, the New Racism argues that it's not injustice when minorities end up trapped in the superstructure. Black people are poor and stupid (but athletic!), Asians are smart and submissive (but tiny!), etcetera, etcetera. Nothing we can do about it. That's just the way things are.
In all of this, the goal is to promote not action, but apathy. Whereas previous generations of racists (including now-beatified Chief Justice Rehnquist) explicitly set out to deny Blacks and other minorities the right to vote or to act freely, the New Racism prevents its adherents from seeing the racism there in the first place. Common to their attitude is the assertion that discrimination is no more, and racism is dead. They don't necessarily mean to do harm--but they won't do anyone any good, either. And so whatever progress we've made will simply halt here, if they have their way, while it should be clear to anyone who simply takes the time to ask that there is still much work to be done.
Indeed, as I've said, some of the worst offenders I've met really should have known better. They're the people who insist that Black people are just naturally more athletic. They're the people who extrapolate deep lessons about Asian culture from anime and kung fu movies. They're the people who laugh at Black comics because a taboo has been crossed, not because the humor is an intersection between fantasy and the uncomfortable truth, as if it were the equivalent of a fart joke. Even having friends who are minorities can't stop these people from finding well-meaning, utterly poisonous generalizations in the world around them--those are exceptions or illustrations of the rules, to the New Racists. It's easy to fall into the trap of these arguments. I worry about it myself.
The Bell Curve is like the canary in the mine shaft, but inverted. Whenever it pops up again into the fresh air, you can be sure that we'll also see a revival in a particularly grotesque Social Darwinism. Unfortunately, I think these attitudes may simply be a part of our particular nation's capitalism. They are part of the dark side of the American Dream: Horatio Alger only makes sense if everyone really is equal, and to admit to inequality is to start down a long road questioning the basic values of American life. Where is that large automobile? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!
This weekend, I helped Belle sign up students for the ESL program she coordinates. I sat across the table from people who didn't speak much English, if they spoke any at all, and tried to work through the forms with them. My Spanish is clumsy, so communication was rocky at times, and it would have been easy to see the other as the root--ignorant immigrants versus the benevolent and educated American. It would have been easy, and it would have been lazy, and it would have been wrong. Because when you stop thinking of people as just deviations from a racial profile (genetic or otherwise) you can see them as a distinct and interesting person worthy of your help. Likewise, the victims of Katrina (and of our society's racism/classism) aren't looters, or refugees, or thugs. They're people just like us with problems we need to solve, and we can't do that until we clear the Bell Curve smoke from our eyes and see them clearly.
00:00 x Thomas x /culture/america/race_and_class x link x 0 comments
Book Review: The Golden Age, by John C. Wright
You will either love or hate The Golden Age, depending on how you feel about explanation in your science fiction. Wright falls firmly on the posthuman side of SF, describing a utopian world where people can edit their mental makeup, physical bodies, and perceptions as they see fit. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it, but I don't see myself buying the other two volumes of the trilogy.
The Golden Age's protagonist is Phaeton, who finds out that his memory was edited after he took part in actions that disrupted society. The book describes his attempts to figure out what was in the missing memory and decide whether or not to restore the editing, even though doing so will result in his exile. Phaeton wanders through a wide variety of real and virtual settings, encountering superintelligent AI, mass minds, and specialized humans. Wright certainly makes the most of the setting, using it for several social and legal tangents, and he's good at describing these in a way that's interesting without being cloying or hiply obtuse.
I don't want to talk too much about the plot, since the discovery of its direction through Phaeton's memory is largely what drives The Golden Age. That leaves us with the characters and the setting, and as I've said they're largely personal preferences. I don't tend to buy the nanotech utopia that this kind of posthuman sci-fi relies on--it feels impersonal and implausible. For example, Wright comes out and clearly establishes that the pre-Phaeton world is meant to be a garden of eden, one where anything is possible as long as it's not dangerous to the existing order. Conversely, it's also clearly a capitalistic system, and I'm not entirely sure if Wright ever puts the two of those together to my satisfaction. It strikes me as more useful in metaphor than in practice. What do these people do for a living?
And why should I care? The trouble I have with a book like The Golden Age, about people who are so far removed from our own experiences and abilities, is I lose track of their limitations, and I can't empathize with them. Wright has done an admirable job of tying the plot to something simplistic (Phaeton's memory as the macguffin) in an effort to defuse that objection, but it's just not enough. The Golden Age is a book about big ideas, and perhaps they're simply too big for me to enjoy. It's not for me, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize its quality. If you're looking for a geekier, grander story, give The Golden Age a try. If you're like me, a child of grimier cyberpunk aspirations, see what else is on the shelf.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/reviews/wright_j x link x 0 comments
Composing with Electroplankton: Table of Contents
Finished chapters:
Audio:
Coming soon:
Have any ideas for articles or questions about previous segments? Leave them in the comments, or send me an e-mail.
18:19 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 1 comment
Where I used to live, a little town of a couple hundred people, they have huge parades (huge for such a small place) that would shut down Main Street completely, including access to just about everything else, including my house. On that day, you had to decide whether you wanted to be at home or out and about, because you certainly weren't going to be shifting between the two. It was one of the most ridiculous sights I've ever seen.
They also had a county fair before Labor Day, which delayed the opening of school. All of this is just a long-winded way of pointing out that the pre-Labor Day Carnival of the Gamers is now available at AFK Gamer. There's the usual suspects, some new stuff, and my Electroplankton series, so Belle and the other people who are bored to tears of it can be reminded one more time just how much they loathe my technofunk aspirations.
You might as well take a look. You're gonna be shut out of the house anyway.
12:47 x Thomas x /gaming/carnival x link x 1 comment
David Byrne, frontman for the conflicted and influential Talking Heads, keeps a journal which is much more thoughtful than you might expect from him. My primary experience with Byrne had been through Stop Making Sense, one of the greatest rock movies of all time, and a book about the band called This Must Be The Place. Both of those paint the man as a few mole rats short of a colony, but he sounds quite sane now.
In response to Elliot Spitzer's recent attack on payola, Byrne has this to say (quoted because he doesn't have permanent links):
Soon enough I began to hear stories, but still these didn’t apply to the circle of musicians I moved in. We could pretend that we were immune.
By the mid eighties, when Talking Heads had had some hit singles, the biggest of which was “Burning Down the House”, I got the news. “Burning Down The House” had some serious “indie” promotion money behind it. It got played on some college and other stations without financial prompting, but the jump to “commercial FM”, as I think it is called, was helped by cash and whatever else was used at the time — probably coke and women.
The band was in the midst of a tour, the one that was eventually filmed as Stop Making Sense. As we crisscrossed the continent (due to technical miscalculations this tour never really went to Europe) I could see that audiences were reacting more and more vociferously and positively to this relatively new song. How exciting! But as I began to hear rumors about the promo money being spent to help the song on radio all sorts of thoughts ran through my head.
I wondered if every pop song that had moved me on the radio, from when I was in my teens, had been paid for. Oh jeez! Therefore, other than a few free-form stations around at that time I was being treated like a Pavlovian dog — what I had believed were my subjective passions and discoveries were actually the result of a concerted program to pound certain tunes into my innocent brain. I had been totally manipulated! What I thought were decisions and loves that were mine and mine alone had been planted in my head by sleazy characters I could barely imagine. Free will? Hah! My entire past was called into question. Who am I? Am I not partly what I like? And if those things I like were not completely of my own choosing, then what am I?
Obviously, this insight applied to our audiences as well. And now, with the success of this single, to our own songs! I caught myself thinking to myself, “they APPEAR to be loving this song, but little do they know they’ve simply been manipulated to like it, just like I was manipulated to like the stuff I like!” They don’t REALLY like it all THAT much, I shouldn’t believe what I see. In fact, I began to doubt whether the song was as good as its reception seemed to imply. As a songwriter and musician I of course would like to believe that when an audience shouts for a song it’s because we’ve written something pretty good that touches them in some significant way. The implication is that my fellow musicians and I are pretty talented. We should pat ourselves on the back, be proud, we deserved some of the perks that were coming our way.
Knowing that the song was partly paid for throws all that ego boost material out the window. Ooops, maybe the song is just O.K., and we’re all so easily manipulated that it doesn’t really matter if it’s good or not. And, as well as thinking less of myself, I began to think a whole lot less of our audience. When people would come up to me and say “boy is that a great song, I LOVE that song!” I would be tempted to tell them, “no you don’t, you’ve just been saturated with it and manipulated like the rest of us. You like it because your soul, your likes and dislikes, are up for sale to the highest bidder.”
Cynical stuff.
In case some of you think this only applies to rap or mainstream pop or dance music or whatever you and your friends don’t listen to, think again. Alt rock, the symbol of “integrity” and “authenticity”, along with hip hop, is just as guilty of payola and promotion as the songs of Madonna and J.Lo. There’s a reason you think so-and-so is cool, and the reason has nothing to do with how good it actually is. There’s a reason writers write about certain artists, etc. etc. (The writers and magazines may not have been paid off, but the popularity of something makes it a valid subject, for example.)
It’s not all bad news, though. There’s another side to it. As has been pointed out many times, you can’t make people like a BAD song. You can only get a song across if it really truly does connect to people, if they really truly do like it. What the payola does, from a very very skewed perspective, is simply reinforce what is already desired. What is already good. It weeds out the lame and the sick and dying and helps the strong and healthy. Eugenic cultural filtering, sort of.
That’s a somewhat benign view of it. But it is true that the indie promoters say they won’t take the money unless the song proves it has at least a shot. They can’t promote a total piece of crap — or so they claim. So you can only get away with shoving a couple of lame singles down the public’s throat, and then the radio programmers themselves will probably react — “keep your money, we won’t play it — it will hurt our listenership, they’ll tune out if we play too many lousy songs.” Well, maybe, up to a point. Over time you can get an audience to accept less and less. The bar gets lowered and it’s easier to break songs that are pure bullshit. But let’s believe there are limits below which the marketplace will not sink.
The other problem with the payola system is that it bankrupts the artist. Not always, but very often, these costs — hundreds of thousands of dollars — are recoupable against the artist’s share of the record royalties. If the song clicks and the record sells millions, then no one complains, as money eventually trickles into the artist’s account. But if other things happen — if the song gets plenty of play maybe everyone really likes it too, but no one buys the CD — then the artist will be unlikely to recoup those costs. So maybe the record company tries a second single, with more indie promotion expenses, which indeed may be the one… or it may simply put the poor artist even further in the hole.
So, what to do? I agree with the Times writer that if payola is going to always be with us then at least let’s level the playing field a little. The harm the present arrangement does is that it locks out artists and labels whose songs are just as good, if not better, than what is getting played, but can’t afford the payments. Things succeed partly on worth, but partly on cold hard cash. It would be nice if worth had a chance on its own every once in a while.
It would also be nice if these hidden costs were less hidden — if the artist were apprised of what was going on in his or her name and had to sign off before incurring substantial debt.
Salon once ran an article by, of all people, Courtney Love, that rambled through the finances of the music industry from an artist's perspective, as well as the whole Napster debacle. It's quite good--I hope she did it herself, and someone didn't have to tell her which end of the pencil to rub against the paper. I'll summarize, since I understand that my Townhall link a few days back may have unavoidably scarred your click reflex:
If you're familiar at all with popular musical history, this probably shouldn't surprise you much. The first distinctly American music, the blues (and the rock that followed it) was heavily subsidized on the exploitation of Black artists. It was cheap to search out a blues musician, who was probably playing in dives and capitalizing on his bad reputation for drinks and sex (see: Robert Johnson), record him (or her, see: Bessie Smith), and then turn around to sell the resulting "Race Record" to a hungry white audience. Many of those contracts had a "no-royalty" clause.
Later, during Motown, manufactured music began to hit its stride. The outstanding documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown documents the story of the Funk Brothers, an incredible group of studio musicians who played behind many of the period's hits. The recognition went to the title artist, while the Funk Brothers were paid next to nothing and strung along by their manager. Some of R 'n B's greatest performers, such as pioneering bassist James Jamerson, were underpaid and underrecognized for their role in creating (and in some cases, writing) the Motown sound. Jamerson himself died in poverty shortly after watching someone else mangle the lines he had recorded many years before.
Likewise, when Rock took over, its appropriation of the contributions of Blues artists was legendary. Led Zeppelin was actually sued by Chess Records for theft of songs by prolific bluesman Willie Dixon (15 years after the fact, unfortunately), and later covered a Memphis Minnie song, "When the Levee Breaks" (all too appropriate as Katrina breaks a few Louisiana levees). Of course, White rock artists are not immune to abuse of their intellectual property--note how Paul McCartney was outbid for his own music by Michael Jackson, and now only owns the publishing rights and control over a few early compositions.
But what can anyone do? Clearly, The Man has a stranglehold on the distribution, financing, intellectual property, and (with the growing number of Clear Channel-owned venues) the largest performance opportunities. In these desparate times, it is tempting to call for a revolution: storm the bastards and make them pay! I'm not sure how feasible any of that would actually be: while indie music has made great strides toward respectability and success, it's still very limited. Moreover, much of it is indie for a reason--it would never stand a chance in a local market. And of course, I can't endorse piracy, even though I don't think it objectively hurts the artists. I do believe that musicians should have the right to decide whether their music is on P2P networks, and we should respect that decision (even when it's a stupid one).
Perhaps instead of blockin' the beltway to move on DC (or LA, or Nashville--hold it together, man!), what we really need is transparency on record label operations. After all, nobody forced Hole or the Talking Heads to sign an exploitative contract. But if more artists like these speak up and get the message out, we may see two happy circumstances. The first could be a movement against artist exploitation for marketing and recording, politically and legally. I'd love to see Spitzer or his equivalent take on the structure that's been fattening the cats in the corner offices. The more people know about these abuses, the more support that person will have. We're Americans, we love our rock stars. Second, I want new artists who are signing up to be aware of this, especially as indie artists get smarter and more desirable. I want bands and songwriters to be cognizant of their situation, and to consider whether they really want to relinquish rights to their songs, completely or in part. This is particularly true if it turns out that they won't be making any more money, really, than they were as an independent.
What really touched me about Byrne's post, and also Love's article, is the integral cost of selling your music (in every sense of the word). Both write about being cheapened as artists because of the money being used to push them as a product, not as a creative expression. When you look out over the landscape of popular music today, with its peaks and its valleys, consider whether you want that environment to favor the easily-cheapened and the corruptible. If you're one of the people who flips madly across the radio spectrum until the quartz cracks, tired of nu-metal and pop-punk soundalikes, ask yourself if you really think the system is working. Or, as Byrne said, have we lowered the bar so low that it's practically under our feet? Is the payola system now less about promoting the good, and more about preserving the status quo?
If you're a musician, abandon that dream of hitting it big, until the conversation between artists and suits changes. Stick to your small stages and your day job that pays for the sweet joy of making music. You might not enjoy selling out as much as you think you will.
12:08 x Thomas x /music/management x link x 1 comment
