phantom of man

Wonder how, so much passes through my mind in a day, and I get really excited where my mind starts floating to.  And I go and talk a walk around the office or the neighborhood to give myself a few minutes to indulge these thoughts.  But somehow, when I sit here, all of the spillage manages to come to a halt.  I stop somewhere, between my ecstatic, thinking smile and my typing hands.  I probably stop aware that you're reading.  Aware that you have biases, a history with me or a different stake in this world.  Somehow your machinations, and your dreams interupt mine.

Is the main thing I always have to will myself away from, letting someone else hold me back.  The most intimidating other being the anonymous, indescript one.  I don't give a fuck what a curious friend or intimate thinks.  But a wandering stranger frightens me, stifles me.

The phantom of man, why have you always had a hold on me?

Google Execs on Trial in Italy for ‘06 Cellphone Video

I don't understand how the EU's rule of law doesn't trump this clearly backwards Italian statute?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ahcbwz

SlumDog Poorism

brief.

I loved this movie, and dream of seeing it again in theaters again before the opportunity passes.  Its so tactile and visually appealing, I know it will be a step down at the least when I NetFlix it again in 6 months.  But this Slate article broke my heart a little, tearing the movie apart.  It still gives the work its due, but is definitely something to consider when you realize just how accessible and digestible this"foreign" film really is.

the article.

What, Exactly, Is Slumdog Millionaire?
Is it a) a portrait of the real India, b) a Bollywood-style melodrama, c) a fairy tale, or d) a stylishly shot collection of clichés?

quote.

"Some would argue that Boyle is guilty of aestheticizing poverty. That's a loaded charge, with its own problematic assumption about what poverty should look like. I would contend that the movie's real sin is not its surfeit of style but the fact that its style is in service of so very little."

New year, new everything

So I started this blog a year ago, and I wasn't so sure why. I like one of my older posts ("my type") because it was quite real, but the rest kind of fell flat? I don't know. Maybe no one follows this (yet) and maybe there's nothing really different about 2009, but it feels otherwise for me. Something about Change in the air, like hearing it so many times finally gets you to step back and re-evaluate your cynicism. As though maybe there's something to finally grow from and build.  

Just sick of being a hater for so damn long.  New job, new apartment, new people in my life, and a new outlook.  The politics of change, and the ambition of growth.  Let's see where this lands us, shall we?

Back on the horse

So I've fallen off writing on this a little too long. That's going to stop, now.

Here's something to whet your palate in the interim (see left)

NY Times article

To all of you I've lied to...

This list is not limited to vows I've already broken, a lot of these things I really have not done. But I'm realizing how both powerful and over-used the term "never" is and the need to purge myself of this disgraceful overuse.



I will never do drugs.
I will never have sex before I am married.
I will never again eat meat.
I will never eat cheese.
I will never live outside of New jersey.
I will never leave the east coast.
I will never get married.
I will never do coke.
I will never masturbate again.
I will never vote.
I will never again believe in God.
I will never be violent.
I will never step on someone else's toes.
I will never have casual sex.
I will never drink.
I will never again lose my temper.
I will never cut my hair.
I will never not shave.
I will never again shave.
I will never work a food service job again.
I will never treat women as anything but Goddesses.
I will never work a corporate job.
I will never take the humanities seriously.
I will never stop attending protests.
I will never dance at punk shows.
I will never dance to hip-hop.
I will never perform on a stage.
I will never show my writing to anyone.
I will never have anal sex.
I will never write a book.
I will never stop wanting to write a book.
I will never own a mac.
I will never like cats.
I will never care about clothes.
I will never dress like a boy.
I will never stop loving chicken.
I will never stop watching football.
I will never watch patriarchal sports again.
I will never sleep with a man.
I will never admit that I'm gay.
I will never admit that I'm bi.
I will never like the french.
I will never live abroad.
I will never sleep with my ex.
I will never be pregnant.
I will never skydive.
I will never like butch women.
I will never look at her body first.
I will never respect the arts.
I will never not be an atheist.
I will never sell drugs.
I will never do anything heavier than pot.
I will never be friends with addicts.
I will never stop being rational.
I will never act out of anything but love.
I have never been greedy.
I will never want what is not a need.
I will never stop thinking in terms of binaries.
I will never see beyond social constructions.
I will never see beyond academic constructions.
I will never stop enjoying computer humor.
I will never want a house and a home.
I will never be like my parents in any way.
I will never want anyone besides you.
I will never do yoga.
I will never relax.
I will never reside in a city.
I will never appreciate the country.
I will never love anyone besides you.
I will never change.

Questions for Economists Regarding Culture War

I am not an economist. Envious I am of their knowledge, I do not have the wherewithal to pore over painful charts of supply and demand. I do however have a profound amount of respect for what, in theory, they do. Possibly more of a hope than a reality, economists may have an advantage of neutrality no other position has, except perhaps physicists. They, like mathematicians, have the position to look at things in a cold objective manner. Except, unlike the system of mathematics and the physical world, the system they must consider is that of human behavior with regards to resources, and therefore they must consider human behavior.

This is where my trust in them deviates. Physicists must consider all elements, and although minimizing variables is useful in modeling for the sake of comprehension, the inclusion of all factors involved remains critical to the precision of their work. Economists should do the same, but because of cultural distinction, I suspect they tend to fall short on this requirement. This is of course a suspicion alone, and so I have this list below of questions for economists I could only dream of getting answers to:

Preface to all questions - Counter-culture is a thematic element that was always remote and offered some form of mystique. Although one could sociologically argue it was always a compelling force, the percentage of those "counter-culturally" defined has increased in at the very least terms of visibility (though I would argue all of these communities have also increased in percentage of the population).

1.) How healthy is it for marketing practices to continue to marginalize an ever-growing percentage of the population? The Gender-queer and trans-identified may not be a large chunk of the population, but time will only increase the self-identified and sensitivities to these people and so resentment for the gender-binary economic climate will definitely affect consumer
behavior. Demographic profiling has not improved in decades and I can say with confidence that the marketing world at the very least does not peg me (and trust me, I'm not that much off the scale as others). But yet I have a paycheck, and consumer potential, I need objects, food, clothing. Yet somehow I'm barely pandered too, let alone legitimately regarded as an effective consumer force. This population is all but declining. Marketers take heed, we exist and our dollars do affect you, especially when they aren't going to you but instead your competitors (however unbranded they may be).

2.) Why isn't culture being considered in the housing market crisis? There is something painfully contrived about suburban culture. There are two kinds of towns - real towns and city-dependent suburbs. Real towns have fostered some form of community over generations, were created organically, and despite a typically conservative tendency that may be in conflict with my person, legitimately have a neighborly feeling. The kind of neighborly feeling my parents look back on nostalgically that city neighborhoods used to have. But instead my parents, and a large portion of their generation, abandoned that to re-construct a stage of a town in the sprawling Jersey suburb that exploded in the 80's. The rate of suburb growth in the state now defines it (whereas small-town blue collar and north jersey city folk were more typical pre-1985). And of course the phenomenon occurred across the nation (though I myself can only be more familiar with what happened in Jersey).

Yet something is really wrong with the housing situation right now. It's a buyers market simply because the demand is abysmal. So why is there all this property that was so aggressively developed suddenly left without those to fill it? I guess I can only point the finger at who i know best - myself. I'm the reason. There is no way in hell I am going to buy my parents' house, or yours for that matter. I much rather cram myself into my Brooklyn apartment than going within a mile of some boring-ass townhouse in central Jersey. Why? Suburbia has become synonymous with the teenage woe of being trapped without any re-enforcing sense of community to counter it. It was a social desert your parents chose to bring you to because they wanted a yard big enough for Fido. No one really liked each other because everyone was transplanted at the exact same time for the exact same reason - a little kingdom of your own at basement prices. The white picket fence could be bought in exchange for a painful two-hour commute and a complete abandonment of the community you elevated yourself out of. Irish/Italian/Jewish class climbers flooded the state with the hope of being near enough to feel comfortably isolated (rather than the scary existential crisis of the country). You could play fetch in the back yard and wave over the fence to those you would never shake hands with. You would never see each other at church, because there was no central church, too many denominations came and no one really agreed on how the religious community could operate. So your children fell off into a secular cynicism while the unfortunate dependence on car travel only heightened economic woes you were never raised to probably consider.

This whole observation could serve as strictly a relatively interesting cultural editorial - if it wasn't for the fact that it probably has deep economic implications. I am not moving back there, even though it was built, in essence, for me. And many others will do the same. So I ask, economists, are you even remotely aware of how this affects your market? Or do you, yet again, insist on ignoring those who aren't chasing after the "average American dream" at the cost of your own failure of perception?

3.) Independent of all the reasons I list above, I have to also admit - even if I wanted to buy my parents home, I may be able to in say, 15 years. I'm 24, and broke. I'm not just dead even broke, I'm in the hole broke from student loans. My dad had loans, but nowhere near the scale that I have. The social agreement of education is broken, where private education (or more accurately, education that is not provided by the state 100% financially) has become necessary rather than a "bonus." As a result, we are all in debt, some of us a little, some of us a lot (like me) and yet we have to question whether it was worth it. The volume of debt I have compared with my current income is astounding. And it isn't going to be alleviated for some time. How was I supposed to know at sixteen these implications? How were my parents to know not needing to go through it themselves? This is a crisis, and its sadly at the cost of the creatively minded. The education cost on average does not depend on major. Yet, some start at $60k, others at $30k. The creatively minded lean towards the latter settling for jobs with a liberal arts degree that cost just as much as an engineering degree. And although there's always the shitty argument that the only leading implication of this is that one should therefore pursue engineering, the truth is we all can't become engineers (it would saturate the job market). The fact is there should be some check on loan debt, school cost and starting salaries that a strictly privatized world does not offer. And a lot of use are stuck in between, and we are all going to pay for it, not just a handful of people. I myself am going to be okay, because though I make shit now, I know it'll grow and won't be such a problem. But the collective problem of the many stuck in this hole, those who were crucially uninformed and mislead, is starting to form a pinch that will only sharpen.



So here is my over-arching question for you economists - are you still so willing to assume that there are only two people you need to care for? Daisy the housewife and Joe the breadwinner are strong forces, but not as compelling as fifty years ago. Marginalize where the pay potential is growing, where the driving forces of dollars continues to bloom, you'll fuck yourselves over. So why isn't there any give? Is a depression really worth a complete denial of your populous? Evangelicals may say yes, but I'm pretty sure shareholders would say no.