Stanly and the Boat

This is a rough draft of something that I wrote for a class. I will likely be trying to improve it later, and I think that it would be interesting to show what happens after editing.

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Stanly and the Boat

Stanly Pentington sat in the tingling morning sun with one hand trailing listlessly in the water and the other flopped across his stomach. His body ached, he was hungry, his two boat mates gave him endless shivers while the waves gave him no measure of rest, he hadn't stood on anything more solid than his raft for weeks, land was beyond sight, and something, something he couldn't understand, might be slithering out there in the dark sea. He glanced over the soft swells and valleys of blue water before him, catching a hint of brine and seaweed on the breeze pushing his unshaven hair before his eyes, and began to chuckle. There really was nothing particularly humorous about the situation save its complete lunacy. A year ago he was on solid land, ate solid meals, and slept in an oh so firmly planted bed, and now, now he was alive at least.

As his stomach growled Stanly considered his current predicament. The whole rotten mess had really begun when he stepped onto that damned ship in the first place. No. No that wasn't quite right, this was his own fault. He knew that ships didn't tend to snare men like spiders, and that it is men who pick their own watery webs in which to be stuck. Stanly had chosen his particular snare months before. He had been sitting on a comfortable white chair on a mild summer day. The wind-born scent of grass hailed his nose as he took occasional sips from a deep glass of tea he had had a servant bring him. Inches from his right hand lay a magazine, pregnant with unread ideas, but at that moment Stanly had found it preferable to lie still save for intermittent grasps at his drink. Lying as such, the sun tickled his skin with its warmth. Away in the kitchen of his tasteful country home, Stanly's wife directed yet more servants as they busied themselves making an afternoon lunch. Soon she, Stanly, and their three children, two of which were scampering about the woods playing at rogues and rebels, the other choosing to nap, would happily eat that lunch. Later the children would be sent to bed with a story, and Stanly would have his time alone with Mrs. Pentington. This dance would repeat for the rest of the weekend, until Monday morning shone and Stanly would go back to work in the city. There Stanly labored managing the tidy fortunes of other men, and no one could say that he did that any way less than excellently. Through work he had ensured over the years that he had those things he desired.

As Stanly basked in his chair that afternoon, the devilish thought that his now boat ridden self knew to be doom entered his mind. His life was nearly perfect. He had money, and from money shelter and servants to see to his needs. He had charm and personality, and from these a lovely wife, and from her beautiful children. The steadiness of his career matched the reliability of his home-life, and both were only rivaled in certainty by the two facts that his existence had become boring and that one day he would die.

Stanly became afraid. He considered that on his death bed he would look back and have only those memories of a life lost. He realized that even then, there on his manicured lawn, what he truly possessed was the past, for the future was uncertain. His past, if arranged as a series of tidy paintings, would have been quite a boring art show to attend. Connoisseurs glancing through that gallery would see two sets of paintings reiterated endlessly; privilege and pretty lawns. As a child Stanly's parents were well off, and watched over him carefully as he played in their country abode, as a young man Stanly studied the arts of managing moneys, and in his current state, he enjoyed some mix of the two former scenes. This was not enough.

Stanly wanted to see what lay beyond his narrow upbringing. He wanted to see the giraffes he had read about as a child, the pyramids and ruins he knew sprawled in deserts and jungles about the world. Stanly wanted to hear foreign tongues surround him, to be a stranger and visitor in someone else's tidy world. The thrill of knavery and the ecstasy of facing probable defeat and prevailing were two vivid wines from which Stanly had not so much as sipped, and of sailing, drinking, riding, painting, poetry and more he knew less. What good was his dull warm box he had preserved from the world for some forty and more years without any knowledge of what sat outside of it? Stanly resolved to see things, to leave behind his wife, children and cozy home, if only for a few weeks each year, and to look, really look, for more specimens to augment his little box-display of a life. Preferably by boat.

Stanly was slapped from his reverie by his boat mate Renwick's mutterings. That whole exploring the world thought, especially the last bit about boats, struck Stanly as poor now that he had tried it and it had gone disastrously wrong. Noticing that Stanly had come to, Renwick looked back at him in his odd sideways sort of way. An abnormally skinny white male of about thirty five years, Renwick possessed thick, bushy eyebrows and lanky, spidery legs. He was prone to many tics, an occasional repeated squinting of his eyes and quick, compulsive jerks of his right fist being among them. His hair was thick and black, and even before their boat had sunk and they had been forced into the life rafts, he had grown a greasy unkempt beard and seldom washed or combed his hair. What was worse, there wasn't enough food for the both of them, which left a grisly issue to be sorted out.

Often when he looked at Renwick, Stanly recalled a chilling conversation he had overheard on the vessel. The ship's attending physician and its captain had been speaking in hushed tones as they walked about the upper deck. Naturally curious, Stanly had pretended to continue reading one of his magazines while intently listening. “What in God's name are we going to do about him?” the captain had demanded. Lowering his voice still further, the physician responded “Heavens Charles, I have no idea. His symptoms continue to worsen, he appears now to be slipping further and further from healthy reality. His words are becoming increasingly violent and just as of yesterday the man started rattling off about how he has some divine lended purpose. None of my medicines have done the least for his symptoms, and I haven't the slightest as to what manner of fit he suffers from. We can't exactly continue to let him roam about the ship as he is, but what are we to say if we lock the fellow up?”. “We'll have to think of something if he gets any worse. For now, just keep close watch over him and late me and the first mate know if the situation...” muttering this the captain stopped and looked quickly up at Stanly whose seat was now quite close to the talking pair. “Good afternoon Mr. Pentington. I trust you are enjoying the morning air on our deck?” Although it was quite clear that both parties where aware of the eavesdropping that had been going on, Stanly managed to muster a sheepish response of “Quite Charles.” With that, the physician and captain strode off with a purpose for the lower decks and presumably the privacy of one of their quarters.

By now Stanly was quite sure that they had been discussing Renwick, but was still as uncertain as they had been over what to do about the man. At night, while the ocean's slow rocking lulled Stanly to sleep, Renwick would remain wide-awake watching him. The last thing that Stanly glimpsed would be those two reddened eyes. In the setting sun they seemed to gleam with unnatural hunger, and when he wasn't twitching, Renwick blinked far less than would have been comforting. Stanly's dreams were filled with predatory eyes, and he often wondered how much his companion actually slept at night.

Stanly had never known a combination of terror and excitement like that of the day their ship sunk. One moment he had been restfully asleep, and the next he had awoken with his oddly door open, probably by the ships tremendous list, and people screaming frantically everywhere. A shallow film of water sloshed to and fro across the floor of his cabin, and when his groggy brain realized what was going on, he sat up electrified and fumbled to dress. He observed the water growing deeper, and now wading, made all haste to the stairs along with everyone else from his passenger deck. An immense throng of bodies shoved, tripped and slid up the three flights between him and the top deck. One unfortunate woman fell in her hurry, and Stanly watched her dissapear with a cry beneath cruel rushing feet. No one seemed to even notice, and while Stanly fought briefly to get to her, the pressing throng forced him away and he thought better of it. When he finally surfaced free from the myriad limbs and bodies of the stairwell, he saw the entire deck nearly filled with milling occupants. The sound of hundreds of worried voices asking questions, crying, and shouting reverberated up and down the length of the ship. He saw the captain standing aloft in his elevated bridge, gesturing orders to the crew who were now guiding the women and children on the vessel into life rafts. Wild faced passengers to whom Charles remained imperious clawed at the windows of his bridge while yelling things Stanly could not make out.

Stanly stopped another passenger by grabbing and swinging around his leather sleeve. The man was just as scared as he, and when asked what in the holy fuck was going on, responded “Captain says someone blew a piece of the hull somehow. Wouldn't say no more.” Hearing this Stanly felt his stomach turn over a few times before regaining composure. The ship had now began to list further sideways, and it became necessary for Stanly to lightly brace his feet as the deck took an incline. The self inflating escape boats the crew were rapidly unloading from their storage compartments were first filled with a small complement of people and then lowered by great white painted cranes along the deck and into the water. Each boat was assigned several crew mates who pushed it off before it was replaced.

Despite there being enough boats for the entire complement of passengers, people again began to push, shove and shout. When it came to be Stanly's turn, and he loaded in and pushed off with some fifteen others packed tightly into his craft. He was one of the last groups loaded, and by that time had needed to grip a nearby railing to brace himself from the horribly skewed ship and gravity working together against him.

For hours, he and the flotilla of assembled rescue craft listened to wails of children and moans of adults as the boat bit by bit submerged. Its crew members scattered amongst the life rafts talked through radios and shouting to one another, and it became apparent to anyone who would listen, which was everyone, that before blowing the hull, whoever or whatever responsible had also destroyed the emergency long distance transmission system, and that no help had been called. This news was unwise information for the crew to share, for the occupants of the assorted rafts were reaching a breaking point of panicked fever in Stanly's opinion.

It was then that a certain greasy bearded co-occupant of Stanly's raft, who he would soon come to know as Renwick, first spoke to Stanly. “So friend, what do you suppose our odds are here then?” he inquired with an off-putting grin. He spoke close to Stanly's face, and his breath stunk of gin. “Well... we are in a shipping lane. I'm sure you have ears just as good as mine and can tell that rescue isn't coming for us, but certainly someone will happen by if we just stay put” Stanly reasoned, as much to comfort himself as to make conversation. The greasy-bearded man nodded and smiled showing straight white teeth, “Aye, true enough. Name's Renwick friend.” Stanly replied “Stanly Pentington. It's good to be of acquaintance. I don't suppose you have a last name Renwick?” “They just call me Renwick friend.” the man replied. Stanly was quite sure he didn't like being called friend by this stranger.

Rescue ships didn't come that evening. Neither did other vessels, and while most of the ragtag flotilla tried to rest, the continued wailing of humanity made that impossible for the lighter sleeping souls, Stanly and Renwick both evidently counting amongst that group.

Deep into the night, with only the moon illuminating the water, Stanly sat awake gazing off deep into the water. The others who remained aware were all lying cramped with the sleepers, sprawled in awkward positions over one another and flailing consciously or otherwise on regular intervals. They reminded Stanly of the fat seals he had once seen in picture books, who sat lazily in colonies stretching for miles along the beach. He had given up on rest and was content to watch water lap again and again against the side of his boat. The water itself was deep beyond sight. It made Stanly feel small. Here he was with several hundred others, the entire lot of them possessing only enough power to crawl across the face of the water at a pace even the tiniest fish below them could match and put to shame. They could see nothing but a horizon and the sky, while from below they must have been vivid specks, visible for miles to the denizens of the deep. They could not see, they could not run, they could not hide. They were as a worm washed up before crows after a sidewalk rainstorm. But were there crows? That thought made Stanly shudder, and as he considered this possibility some corner of his mind fancied that he saw something in the depth over the edge of his boat.

The lines of a vast shadow pranced deep below him. At one moment the darkness appeared formless, and at the next it was as if a great circle of black was slowly ascending from below. He rubbed his weary eyes and smiled to himself at his foolish ideas, but when he looked again the shadow remained. He strained to understand whatever it was, running over possibilities in his mind. A shoal of fish, a drift of plants, the boats themselves casting an image, or just the reflection of light acting strangely with the sea water, it must have been one of those things he told himself. And then he saw its mouth. A great black line stretching from one side to the other, inching closer to the boats, grand enough to swallow the lot of them whole. With a panicked yelp he jumped backwards and sat down. He inched to the edge again and looked, but the shadow had receded. In his ear he heard the words “Sleep friend, sleep” and this time was not quite so unhappy to be called so.

The next day came and went amidst fewer moans and far more mumblings and grumblings. The assembled former passengers and crew mates had resigned themselves to waiting for pickup, and it was during this day that the crew rafted up all of the small lifeboats and divided out the bulky emergency food and supply containers stored on the rafts. They were thickly fortified boxes, each weighing close to 100 pounds between their casing and the food, medicine, and equipment inside. Some conflicts arose, but for the most part people were either too optimistic, too weary, or too stupid to raise a fuss. It was a very hot day, and Stanly found himself sweating often. He wondered what they would do for water were no help to come soon, couldn't provide an answer, and so tried to put the issue out of mind.

Evening fell with the swells beginning to rise higher and with thick dark clouds coalescing on the edges of the Western horizon. The air tensed and from the general hubbub Stanly could tell that people were scared. He certainly was. As the night grew thicker and the light thin, waves began to crash over boats on occasion, and the entire fleet rose and fell on the larger hills of water that would come rushing by. Soon the winds had raged to terrifying speed, churning the water with them, and huge fists of salt and sea pounded the boats. The huddled people in them were plucked by pairs and flung like petals from a flower in a child's hands. As the storm worsened, entire sections of boats were carried off, and Stanly gripped a rope running around the gunnel of his rubber raft as the thing that it was – his life. Each successive wave would make his already numb and barely gripping hands colder, force him to splutter for air, and stick his eyes. Others beside him were not so fortunate, and he watched them be dragged screaming into the depths and out of site. At first he tried to reach out and save those lost to the craft, but quickly his strength was only sufficient to stay aboard. After one brutish wave divested him of three more companions, he looked up to see yet another massive sledge of water crashing towards him. As it struck, the world turned to water, the raft rising in its titanic column. Stanly would have screamed were he able, but instead he only gripped to the guide rope as if his hands were locked in the vice of death. As the boat was flung back downwards, his head struck something hard, and with a flashing of pain Stanly remembered no more.
He awoke to a spinning clear sky. Sitting up dazedly he looked around, and was disturbed to see that all save one of his original companions had vanished. Renwick alone remained, was awake, and was watching him. Stanly looked around the surrounding ocean and it occurred to him that a small raft was really much like a jail cell. By his right ankle lay one of the emergency steel boxes. He glanced around searching for the other three boxes which should have been situated at the bow and mid port and starboard sides of their raft, but the storm had evidently washed them away with the other passengers. Thinking of how many days one fourth of a food supply intended to feed fifteen people for a few days would last himself and Renwick, he began to grow nervous.

It was then that Stanly heard Renwick chuckling. The man's laugh slithered out over his unkempt beard like a gurgle of air escaping a slit throat. It was deep, and made Stanly involuntarily shudder. “Drowned, drowned, the fools I drowned, to win my spot, in clouds soft wound.” rasped Renwick as he rocked back and forth on his haunches, never taking his gaze from Stanly. At this, Stanly's mind began to race. He recalled again the conversation of a crazed man he had overheard between the captain and his doctor, and the account of the ship's radio lines being cut after it mysteriously sprung a great leak. He backed away slowly towards the opposite end of the raft. “A friend he fears, from us he rears, why friend run, our job is done” spat Renwick. This was not the voice Stanly remembered from their first meeting, but rather more frantic and drawn. Seeming to sense Stanly's thoughts, Renwick smiled and winked at him, then lay back on the opposite end of the boat, closing his eyes, and moving towards sleep.

His heart pounding now, Stanly tried to breathe and take stock of the situation. He floated to who knew where an unknown distance from his original course, he had food at least for a few weeks, no idea how or when rescue might come, and a potentially unstable companion. He was hungry now, and so reached for a first meager meal of dried vegetables, their powdery taste wicking the moisture from his mouth. This reminded him of his need for clean water. Digging quickly through the emergency bin, he sighed in relief as he found iodine tablets and a salt filter at its bottom. There certainly were no cups, but he would make due with the discarded wrappers of the food. It took him some forty minutes while Renwick slept to pump his first drink of clean water since the ships sinking, and the feel of cold refreshment coursing down his throat was sublime. Next Stanly surveyed in greater detail what had been provided by the raft's planners. A manner of further dried vegetables, with complementing fruit lay before him, and besides those what appeared to be some form of gravy mix and deyhydrated potatoes. It was nothing special, but would have to do for now. Surveying the limited supplies, a certain partial solution to his problems insinuated itself into his mind; one man would have more food. Shocked at his own baseness, Stanly shoved the idea aside as best he could; he was a civilized man and would take part in no such evils.

The rest of the day passed to the smooth rhythm of waves rocking the boat as ceaseless rays of light bounced off the surrounding water and the two men. Renwick would roll over periodically, and sometimes awoke and quietly watched Stanly, but the man spoke no more. Night set, and now Renwick was more alert. Stanly tried to make himself comfortable and to sleep, but again found it difficult, especially now with Renwick up to god knew what. Finally he slipped away into repose, and that night he thought he dreamed of dark creatures slipping through unseen depths.

The next day passed in much the same style. Renwick had begun to continually mutter things to himself just below audible level. Occasionally Stanly picked out references to drowning and death. He tried to engage Renwick in some kind of conversation, trying to get some explanation or even a foothold of truth towards who his companion was, but was continually rebuffed, his questions serving only to intensify the cadence of Renwick's inaudible drone. Three times that day they took turns pumping water, and act that for one reason or another brought comfort to Stanly, and supped in near silence on their fruits and vegetables. By now the sun had well burnt the two mens' skins. There was nothing to be done about it hoping his shirt provided a fine barrier, and so Stanly consigned himself to being cooked like a lobster. He wondered if whatever he had seen in the deep would like that were he to drown out there.

The week passed much in kind, Stanly worrying about the future, Renwick making him uneasy, and both keeping close watch on the other as well as the horizon, hoping to see some ship, some salvation, but never being rewarded for their wait. Stanly had been resting poorly and was growing weary, the energy drained from his body just as much by the inescapable heat as by his restlessness. He couldn't recall when it started, but several days after their wreck, Stanly had begun to notice more of Renwick's small mannerisms. Each time the man took a bite of food, he would smack his lips, and he chewed like an elephant with a mouthful of grass, not bothering to close his mouth. Every bite he took came with another smack, and the popping noise was as unavoidable as the sun to Stanly. It bothered Stanly to no end. Renwick also would not sit still. While he muttered, he would gesticulate constantly, and twitch his head side to side in his way. When Stanly was forced to urinate or relieve his bowels, Renwick would rarely look away.

The time of the wait itself was beginning to get to Stanly as well. Back home, he had always had something to do. At work he moved towards a goal, finding a new project just as an old portfolio or transaction had been dealt with, and at home he busied himself reading and raising children throughout the day. Here, there was little that could be done save gaze at the horizon and fear Renwick. He would try to make an hour pass by counting as many ridges along a wave as possible before it merged with another, imagining scenes of his old life, and memorizing the thin crevasses and details of his raft, but in the end each minute composed an eternity and the only severance to the monotony was Renwick's infuriating habits, which had themselves come to be expected.

Five days more slipped by, and it became evident that the food supply was dwindling. Of the original stash, the two men had worked through well more than half, and it became quite clear to Stanly that they may run out before rescue. He put his hand to his brow in frustration, sliding the other around his now thick stubble and twisting his head. He wanted to scream or hit something, but that would waste energy and only make him hotter in the endless rays.

Another six days passed, and on the seventh, Renwick was past being an antsy creature caged on the water, and was now closer to an active volcano. His charred, red and flaking skin certainly looked the part at least. It was that dusk as the sun and its damned heat began to flee him that he was startled to hear Renwick speak. The man's speech was now more regular than it had been since the first time they met. “Friend, how are you faring” inquired Renwick. “Well you can pretty damn well see can't you now my silent partner.” Stanly was incensed with the other's idiosyncratic behavior. “I would just have you know, I sunk the ship” confided Renwick. The way he said this was just as if he were telling the news, and by now Stanly was too worn to mount any reasonable reply. Instead he sat there with his mouth soundlessly flapping.

The next day Stanly gathered the staunchness to reply. He probed “Is that bit you said, about the ship, really true Renwick?” “Yes” replied the man. “You vile fiend, why in blazing hell would you?” “It needed to be done” Renwick retorted. At this Stanly slumped, he truly was in the presence of a lunatic, and what was worse, he had so little to sever the days that it was preferable to entertain him than to say nothing. “If that's so Renwick, why would such a thing need to be done?” “Friend, this place we live in has too many people. They are fat. They are greedy. They want us livin for their goals, for their end. They want us spendin our only resource, life, to keep their own security. My bones told me there was a storm comin, we needed less of them, I did what I did and God will look kindly on me.” Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the grinding sameness of the water, but Stanly wanted to understand Renwick. He had taken his voyage to escape living a molded life, and certainly others had tried to mold it, but... this was madness. “Friend, there is only so much to go around. We pretend to share. We don't. Some take what they will, and the rest believe in manners and place, and die by billions to win some small house off somewhere. There are too many.” With that Renwick was again silent. Stanly pondered his preposterous words, and as dusk fell it occurred to him that Renwick was right. Renwick was so very right, there was too little for everyone.

That night was calm and quiet on the water. As Renwick partook in his nightly ritual of watching Stanly, Stanly returned the act. Hours later, Renwick began to dose, still muttering in his sleep. Possessed by a singularity of purpose, Stanly emptied the remaining half of the his food supply, claimed a short length of rope and a knife from the steel box, and set to work. He gently untied the box from the straps holding it to his raft, and cut an even shorter length of rope free. The anticipation of what he was about to do made his head pound, and the waves around him fuzzed away. All that remained was food, Renwick, a box, some rope, and himself. He tied one end of the rope around a handle of the metal container, and quietly, carefully, crept towards Renwick. The man rolled fitfully over towards him as Stanly crept closer. Now Stanly could hear the in and out rhythm of his breathing, and made out his soft muttering. The words “Drowned. Drowned. Drowned. I...I... Drowned” crept in endless cycles from Renwick as if to confirm Stanly's intentions. Stanly tied the rope around the other man's leg, going slowly and gently so as not to awake Renwick. When he had finished this, his clammy hands slipped backwards shaking.

He crept back across the raft, tensing his muscles for what was to come. He had never been a physically fit man, but now he felt alive and fierce as a lion. In his teeth he clasped the short knife, and with both hands he picked up the steel box now tied to Renwick's leg. The stars and moon cast a thin shadow from his form across the sloshing water as he carried his heavy load over to the boatside near Renwick. He looked over into the black water, and was unsurprised to see the massive dark form he had been waiting for. It's maw stretched dozens of lengths of his boat, some fifty feet down. The crooked bend of its jaw appeared to Stanly to be a great hungry smile. Moments later, he struck. With all of his force, he hurled the box over the side, and as it tugged on Renwick, he grabbed the knife from his mount and slashed it downwards. He raised it again, the blade now soaked in red fluid, and slung it again into his enemy whose hands were now upwards in a vague gesture of defense. Several more times Stanly struck, and then, as Renwick tried limply to fight against the assailant, Stanly grabbed the man by his shoulders, and shoved him towards the water's edge. Renwick, struggling, screaming in some unintelligible form now, grasped madly to the edge of the boat with boat hands as his legs dangled deep into the water. Stanly gave a kick to Renwicks head, and as Renwick thrashed to stay afloat delivered further blows. Renwick struggled like this for some minutes, but as the the water around him grew darker still with his blood, he eventually succumbed and sank. Stanly thought he saw the creature swallow Renwick whole, and retreat. He sat down in the boat, looked at the food scattered across the raft, and began to sob.

For two more weeks Stanly floated alone. He had only enough provisions to eat several morsels a day, and he grew exhausted and emaciated. At night he thought no more of great creatures, and saw the thing no more, but yet he could not sleep. It was not long before he could barely raise himself to the boats edge, and spent the day in complete exhaustion on the floor of his vessel. Ten days in the food ran out, and he could only sit and wait. For four days he did not eat, seeing terrible things, and coming to grips with his doom. He had been wrong to off Renwick, and couldn't understand what drove him to. The creature beneath the sea was pure hysteria.

Some thirty days after the sinking of the boat, Stanly was unsure of the exact date, a ship appeared on the horizon. Stanly rubbed his eyes at first, then lurched hazily to his feet and waved his arms as best he could. The vessel was a large fisher, and tooted a baritone response several minutes later as it approached him. Stanly vaguely perceived being pulled aboard by worried faces come to meet him in a launch, and brought onto the ship. He was given a soft clean bed, asked his name and business, and when it was found that he had been on the sunken passenger ship from the last month, the crewmen were shocked. Seeing his poor condition and already possessing nearly a full haul, their captain called off the fishing trip and set for shore. A day later the fast engines brought them to Stanly's home port. All Stanly could think of was his family, and demanded to see them immediately, but the men instead took him to the hospital, telling him that he had undergone great stress and that it was a marvel he was alive. There he sat in bed waiting, just as he had at sea. The doctor's took his insurance information from the battered wallet still in his dirty clothes, asking him many strange questions that he only partially understood, and came and went.

Later that very day, a nurse asked him if he would take visitors, to which he shook his head affirmatively as best he could. When his children came running in yelling daddy and hugging him and shining their blessed little smiles, he felt like he was home. Moments later, his beautiful wife entered with a deeply concerned expression on her face. She took his hand, leaned close to smell his hair, and kissed him on the forehead. Exuberant and crying, she whispered, “Renwick darling, I never thought I would see you again”.

Why the news will give puppies cancer and generally rain unpleasent doom on the world

I've recently come of the opinion that our democracy is hosed. The goose is cooked, the acorns thoroughly burnt, all has been said, and everything has been done; it's curtains.

Ok enough of that. Hopefully I've won your attention my fine reader. I embellished a bit above, but daily a potential trend towards our undoing does grow unchecked. We aren't providing good news information to Americans and few care. The essential problem lies with media outlets who profess to be news agencies and really are opinion mills. Jon Stewart and a few others harp on this point on a semi-regular basis, and you should watch Stewart's interview on Crossfire if you would like to see harping well done in the face of opposition.(Which if squirrely for some youtubes, you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE)

As for me, while I had heard this point numerous times, I discounted it as a threat until several days ago. Fox News did a segment on the inefficiencies of the US Postal Service. They assembled a panel to create a 'debate' around the issue. Their primary speaker was some slimy sounding pundit who evoked nationalistic racist tendencies against Africans to support his point. He also suggested that we ought to privatize operations like homeland security entirely. Engaging the privatized security debate here would be bulky and distracting, but I hope we can agree that racist rhetoric has no place in news, opinion, or any other legitimate attempt to suggest policy. (If squirrelier still, you may find it here. Bonus, the title is a pun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi19yLcGk8c&feature=player_embedded)

The panel agreed, and spent much of the discussion speaking briefly to support an attack on the USPS, and then arguing about how racist his statements were. One panel member, senator D'Amato, openly roasted the racist rhetoric and made the video quite popular. While the most interesting thing about the segment was seeing a pundit ripped up like a piñata, it also eerily reminded me of something else.

A debate happened, an appearance of two sides was created, and both of them supported one agenda. One opinion came across as quite radical, and the others as moderate by comparison. Glenn Beck, a popular commentator on Fox, released a ghost penned novel called The Overton Window this June. The fictional book details a world in which a political ideology based on the theory “The Overton Window" runs rampant. The theory states more or less that a certain range of views are acceptable in any given political dialogue. The corollary to this, and the one that the book interests itself with, is that extreme views expressed frequently shift the window. A quick wikipedia search yields that the theory is an actual one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window. The Fox segment was doing what Glenn Beck suggested.

This alone would hardly be cause for concern. From what I have seen though, Fox constantly misstates critical facts, makes highly opinionated and partisan arguments, and generally supports a determinate agenda. Certainly some of this is not labeled as News, but people take it that way. In the USPS segment alone, large portions of information were equivocated, such as the USPS needing to deliver to areas that private firms can charge higher rates for, or that various private firms even looked into using USPS as a cost saving measure to ship non-profitable items. People take this so called news as their reality, and believe strongly that what they hear is the truth.

Think to the debates surrounding creationism vs. evolution in textbooks. Without engaging the discussion itself, we still know that it was often ugly and that resolutions were difficult to find. The core problem was that the two sides were operating under fundamentally different premises; their conceptions of the world were different. Now imagine if someone could actively mold people's core beliefs. What if their entire political and world view was informed by a deliberately constructed narrative. This is where we are headed.

Before we blame Fox as the source of all evil, we should note that they are hardly alone. Liberal outlets like the Huffington post and MSNBC are well enough known for biased coverage. Just go to Huffpost and look at the pictures and headlines they use, you will find the images of those politicians they do not favor to be quite ugly. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/. Fox is just a juicier target because they put up all appearances of intentionally telling a partisan story and cut more corners with the facts.

These media outlets alone are not the root cause of the problem. As long as wealthy interests have an incentive to build narratives in the news, and a means to do so, they are going to. If we cut down Fox somehow, a new hydra would spring up eventually. I believe firmly that we can't have much of a representative democracy at all if people don't have good information. When their truth is corporate truth, their votes are corporate votes, and we begin catering to the fattest wallet instead of the people's interests.

This is a dialogue that demands immediate attention. As a starting point I would advocate a greater focus on discerning good information from bad information in schools, and some basic legal requirements for news stations. As I understand it, there are few now. We could for example place fines in cases of chronic fact-check failure for major outlets, or label news like we label our delicious, sometimes healthy, breakfast cereal. If these solutions seem contrived and doomed to failure, that is partially because the system itself is awkward and in a position where solutions are difficult. Regardless of what action we take, we must do something. If we don't solve this pollution of our society's basic political awareness, it will soon solve us.

Journal - August 15

Why geeks are in general better

I'm told that that this term geekdom refers to those possessing of deeply set interests in random topics. Look it up on urban dictionary if you don't believe me. Actually don't do that, it completely undermines my point, but that's not important now is it.

What does matter, is that geeks are in general better. For one thing, they tend to be literally better at things. Who wants to be around a bunch of people with only healthy interest in normal subjects. Did anyone ever compose great masterpieces without obsession, bring audiences to tears with a perfectly balanced life, or brand by sheer force of language ideas into our minds that will never be erased with only passing interest? Mozart - probably never left his study, Socrates - stared blankly off into space for hours - willingly accepted a death verdict for his ideas, Picasso - let's not even start.

On a more practical level, the geeks of the world, to me are just more interesting. I'll go into depth more on the subject another time, but suffice it to say that we can talk about ideas or we can talk about objects and things. Most conversations are the latter, and so many of these are the same. It doesn't matter whether we discuss Nascar, Wine and Cheese, or South Park if the same descriptive phrases and emotions are being expressed with only a swap of the nouns connecting their respective adjectives. Sure small talk can be jolly swell, but if you want to break the mold, the easiest way will almost always be to find some geek and ask them about their favorite subject. Unhealthy fascinations breed more than just 'book good, author good, prose good' and 'show good, joke good, surprise good' like none other.

Also - people being excited about their stuff contracts through a conversation like zombie bites in a crowded city. Sure we can spend our time kibitzing about the regulars, and listening to explanations of the same old things that have been repackaged and resold countless times so as to cast their teller in a fashionably positive light, but without genuine enthusiasm all of these stories feel hollow to me at least. I don't care what people talk about; I just want their eyes to light up and their smiles, their real honest grins, to let me know that they are interested. It's just less dull.

Take HDstarcraft. A guy who just loves video games posts commentaries on all things related to Starcraft II on a Youtube channel by that name. You can find it here if interested: http://www.youtube.com/user/hdstarcraft?blend=2&ob=4. A year ago, his videos were grossing maybe 1k hits each. About five months ago, the page exploded, and now everything he posts receives 100k+ views. Starcraft itself is hardly that interesting, and there are countless other pages much like his that have failed to become popular. I believe it is hardly content that brings viewers slobbering by the masses to his page, but his attitude. Even if you are not a Starcraft, or even video game fan, I recommend that you go watch a few minutes of one of his videos. It should be easy to tell that he is pleased to be commentating. His attitude reflects itself in more ways than just with a happy voice though; his attention to detail and general obsession for Starcraft lead him to spew forth gems of wisdom like some kind of free wisdom gem spewing super-geyser. Much of what he says takes on relevance to our shared struggles to improve and our mutual triumph in achievement. Concepts like this would never be communicated so honestly and so simply by anyone without a consuming, brain eating, unquenchable sense of geekdom like his.

I take from HDSC and all the other fanatics I have met of late that balance is overrated. We aren't breaking any new ground without rabid commitment, and we certainly are not spending the majority of our time doing what we enjoy without it. Everyone has some geek in them, and most nourish it to some extent. Do it more. Geeks are in general better.

Journal - August 14

Why Alaska Airlines is Blowing It

Today I took a two-part flight from San Francisco to Seattle, ran into a Whitman student in the bathroom of an airport in Oakland, met someone from Iowa, had an above average ham sandwich, and decided that Alaska Airlines is the devil.

Ok maybe that's an exaggeration, but how can they be forgiven for the woe that their airport lines sow?

There I was, early for my flight, bright-eyed for Seattle, ready to go through a short line and board my plane. To my side were Kiosks, unlabeled, which I chose to ignore as I had a bag to check. The line took surprisingly long, as periodically the two clerks managing the 40 waiting persons would shout out the name of a party, and that group would cut to the front and receive service. As I got to the very front, the line slowed even more. Hoards of people had their names called in turn behind me, and I continued to patiently wait. As even more were summoned, I would have been quite irritated were it not for the pretty girl just ahead in line who kept smiling at me in a pain-sharing sort of way.

This travesty of a queue continued as detailed for another 10 minutes before a clerk finally had the decency to look up and mention that they were calling the other parties because they had gotten their tickets at the kiosk.

My mild aggravation was as mighty as an average cow, deep as a pond, and fiery as bell peppers. How dare they!! Not only was there no official recognition of this system to let flyers know what they were missing out on, but the marginal time saved by electronic check-in was more than erased by having to wait for the called persons to hear their call, and awkwardly bustle through the entire line, cutting everyone.

I wanted to complain but didn't feel quite adamant enough to say anything. I wanted to throw my bags down in light disgust, but that would serve no purpose. I wanted to voice my disapproval, letting ring clear the resonating notes of truth and justice across that fetid swamp of ignorance and bureaucracy embodied in the clerk smirking before me, but that would create a small outcry. My voice was trapped by the non-severity of Alaska's transgression as was my body by their oppressive line-system. Alaska, let it be known that you, of all airlines, are doing it wrong.

Journal - August 13

Oh my god. Summer is over. What the hell. That took what seemed to be a week. I fear deeply that as time goes by, this effect will accelerate. Maybe I will be dead in two more weeks.

When I was young, it seemed like a year was entire epochs of time. Each precious day spent running through the grass, exploring new wonders, and breathing the rushing thrill of childhood in the woods was a full aeon unto itself. Now I can groggily study and play video games in an uninterrupted routine for an entire summer without so much as blinking. What am I coming to?

I believe that this, as many problems are, is fundamentally a product of video games. When I am habitually gaming, the easiest thing imaginable is to finish whatever minimal commitments I have placed on myself, and immediately tear off to my comatose repose in cyber-land. In such a state, as I learned in a 30-day bed stay following surgery, I am content to lull for what so has so far been empirically found to be an unlimited amount of time. It's likely that hell would freeze over, pigs would fly, Bush would apologize, July would feature a cold day, and generally unlikely things would go about occurring willy-nilly before I grew tired of gaming.

So... that leads to the awkward question. If fiending on the internets makes time vanish, and if memories and the perception of time are all that we have to live for, is it better to simply enjoy the moment goggle-eyed and drooling behind a laptop screen somewhere, or to abandon something that I love doing in favor of the better things lying all around me?

In ten years I have not satisfactorily answered this question, and it would appear that neither have many of my peers.

Having preferred the side of passive submission to date, doing what was easy, in this case gaming, in preference to exertion, I honestly cannot speak knowledgeably of the other side. For this reason, willpower allowing, the coming semester will be an experiment for me. If you have a similar problem, many of the people who occasionally read this Blog do, consider trying this with me. Here's to effort, promises, and their successful upkeep.

A question for readers?

Hello everyone,

I have a question for you. But first a point of clarification; when I say you, I assume that there exists a you. I have not neglected the possibility that I am the soul audience for these scribbles, in which case my problem is already solved, but for the sake of discussion and for having an indirect object to the sentence that is writing, let's assume that there is a you.

Would you like to hear the other things I have to say?

Every day I write to myself at reasonable length. Sometimes the things I write are private, and these I probably will never share with anyone, but other times they are just observations on the various skallywaggerings, hip-happenings, and skullduggery of my day.

Currently I do not post these things; I never really wished for this blog to turn into one of those "dear diary" type affairs, but I would consider it if there were interest.

Would that be of any intriguing? I will take no offense in either of the two negative cases, that where you say "no", and that in which I receive no reply. This blog itself, and everything else I write is for practice, and I achieve that whether or not I gain an audience.

So how about it?

Vacas Venonosas

Henry stirred awake to the slicing crows of a rooster. His blurry eyes made out the outlines of several, small dancing figures about his bed, and with a great smile he greeted his siblings good morning for what was sure to be an exciting day. Together they sprinted past the sweet smelling kitchen where their mother stood preparing breakfast, out over the rough rocks surrounding their house, through soft lanes of dirt housing newly lain seeds, and to the barn. There in the morning light stood their father, practically bouncing with pride, eyes wide open to see his young and exuberant offspring. Today, the children would learn to milk!

Looking at so many open jaws and expectant faces, the father's mind began to wander. So quickly had his little sprouts passed through infancy, and now, despite not yet having achieved full stature, the batch of them, his triplet sons, were prepared to take part in that most difficult, and most valued pursuit that his father, and his grandfather, and an entire clan before them had learned just as well. Soon they would be milking the cows together. With this thought, a cloud of doubt slank across the periphery of his consciousness. Were his little beanstalks ready yet?

Though beautiful, milking was a far cry from careless seed planting, grinding, yet predictable wheat harvests, leading mules, and all other forms of labor on the farm. Cows were unpredictable creatures, usually dormant and docile as the sweetest of dogs, at the clipping of a second they could become volatile and aggressive. If their hooves did not catch you, their nipping bite surely would, and from there it was a short trip to join his father and the rest in peaceful repose. He tremblingingly pictured his joys pail and shaking on the ground. No! They were of a good stock, they had the same wits and quick hands he possessed, and like so many before would come of age and do their part when they were good and ready, and now was that time. Mentally running over his technique and instructions as he did for each milking, he prepared this time to also share with his children, beckoning them to follow as he walked towards the sleeping herd.

A few bovines had already floundered awake with the morning sun. They hissed contentedly, and occasionally one would whisk its long graceful neck outwards, and with a slap of finality end the life of some wayward fly.

-My sons, you know of what you will soon learn. You know the risks, you know the importance, you know the reward. As your father, I impart what I know onto you, so that one day each of you will be able to care for yourselves and your own as I do now. Pay close attention and do as I teach, and you will succeed, but miss no details and be not careless, for the slightest mistake carries with it the gravest of costs.

The children, hushed now, watched their fathers gesturing hands with complete rapture. He smiled inwardly, knowing that at least today, they would learn well.

-Cow milk. The hardest fought for, rarest, and most valuable commodity of our farm. One pail will fetch a week's worth of planting wages on the market. To claim it, you must get past our friends here. They are good animals, but jealous, and be assured that if you give them the slightest margin they will take from you more than their due return for the milk. Do not allow them to bite.

He stepped forwards clenching his pale in one hand, slowing inching his other towards the first unaware cow. Sensing his approach, the creature suddenly became tense. It coiled back its meter-long neck, resting it against a massive furry, black and white body, hissed, and bared its long syringine fangs.

-Note the gougers on our friend here. One nick from these, and you will be unconscious; a good bite and I will be lost a son. Because you will be careful, and because you are my own, they will not bite you. Do as I do.

With that, the father purposefully raised his pale towards the creature. The still dewy air hung still for moments. Sighting the hated artifact, the cow uncoiled rapidly and struck. The pale, designed specifically to absorb the fanged impact, did not scratch or break, and the cow's extension give our farmer his opening. His other hand snapped forward with purposeful severity, seizing the cow across its fist sized hide. He slide his hand back along the neck now, holding it very tightly just below the venom sacks on the back of its skull. With that, he produced a rope from his satchel, gently tying the creature's dangerous striking end to one of its frontal legs, and proceeded to mutter a brief prayer, and collect the sweet juices of sustenance from its bulging udders.

-That my sons, is how it is done. Now I have a number of calves in this nearby pen. They produce only very little milk, but likewise their venom is limited. I would like you to spend the rest of the morning practicing on our smaller herd. Now go.

With rushing glee, the children grabbed buckets and rope of their own from the pile by the barn's entrance, and sprinted off towards the pen, each trying to pass the others to seize their father's eye with their strength and exuberance. They set about emulating their forebear with zeal, and he watched on approvingly. As each did just as they were instructed, the heavy morning dampness became indistinguishable from a petite spot of water clambering down their father's face. That night he slept better than in weeks.

-Wilder

(Please forgive spelling and grammar; I wrote this during lunch-break after eating a sandwich, so there wasn't much time to append things.)

Craig's List Want Add

I thought it would be interesting to put out a Craig's List personal. Alex Kushner helped out a bit.

A Modest Proposal: 20 (Monterey)

Handsome, lost and slightly dangerous. Unintelligibly wealthy but unwilling to admit so. Confident and directive, likes long quiet walks, poetry, exercise, and listening to your feelings and lengthy stories. Will not grow tired of hearing about your buds. Expressive of my feelings, but not in a complaining way; only needs to show the torment hidden deep within spiraled eyes. Enjoys guitar, cooking elaborate meals, and saving kittens from impending disaster. Stopped a tank in Tiananmen square. Averted three international armed crises. Not afraid of bears. Unavailable. Smells like strawberries, but in a manly way. Loves children, and small furry creatures. Daily pulls a sled of orphans to a fresh source of stream water to conserve transportation and desalinization costs. Also likes orphans. Spontaneous. Aboogabooga. Working on Ulysses II. Has a nice Butt. Charismatic, sensual, persistent, caring, and loyal. Very clean pores. Modest.

A perspective on slam poetry

Meep Meep goes the darkness.
Or so it seems, as the roadrunner races across pulsating asphalt,
Enigmatic as the desert sands, he will not be caught, will not be caged,
But is he already, by the immutable walls of reality,
By a culture, extending its salty, greasy, hungry capitalist hands towards vulnerable nature;
By the choking embrace of network television;
By millions of young, relentless eyes, once boring him, transfixing him into a brightly colored screen, demanding more appearances, roaring for the risk of yet another elaborate, deadly trap.
Now they look elsewhere.
Surely this animal, this fictitious being to whom we ascribe our own filthy mannerisms of trickery, guile, wit, insolence, hubris will never rest at peace with his brethren, will never again feel the sole scraps of attention we would afford him, buried deep beneath a seething tide of gory fascination.
For we marked him, marked him irrevocably with our disease, and in so doing left that solitary Meeper astride of two incompatible ways of life, Nature and our strip-mall Hell, questioning his place in either, finding love in none.
Meep Meep goes the darkness.

Frank

/ / /

I was bored around 11:30 this evening so I sketched out and wrote the first part of a three-segmented short story. This is yet to be edited, but will likely see love soon. I hope you enjoy.

/ / /

Frank

Frank was an oddly dissatisfied man. He worked in a home services shop, smiling, directing customers, and generally facilitating the sale of wares for his employing corporate chain. More particularly his job involved the construction department. There, Frank would ensure that the entire medley of nuts, bolts, lumber, tools, and other building supplies were in proper order, and that the patrons of that section were sufficiently informed and primed to purchase goods. What killed Frank about this was not the lack of room for advancement, or the long hours spent on his feet, or even those demanding and seemingly obnoxious consumers, spittle flying from their jaws as they requested immediate data on the location of widgets, Frank in fact rather enjoyed the challenge of dealing with those odious persons. No, what made Frank perish a little the more every evening was inventorying.

You see, every night Frank's employer wished for each piece of merchandise to rest in its proper place. This would to a casual listener sound reasonable, but due to the nature of Franks work was in fact rather soul crushing. In one aisle, aisle seven, the aisle where nails and screws were kept, there were nearly a thousand individual cubbies housing every manner of possible shape, size, and orientation of fastening devices. Customers would often pour over these, selecting a healthy dozen which closely resembled what they desired, and on finding the correct bolt, dump the remainder in the nearest convenient tray. In one day Frank's section would see hundreds of customers, nearly a third of them dumping merchandise. As they did so, somewhere, Frank cried on the inside, for his lot was to correct their careless sloth before going home in the evening.

This entailed slowly digging through the stretching gray sea of nearly identical parts in aisle seven, detecting those out of place objects, and diligently returning them to their correct positions. For that one problematic lane alone, the process could take anywhere from minutes to several hours. It took hours more often than not. On finishing aisle seven, which he always did first simply because he could not bear the thought of doing it once weary from the rest of his nightly clean-up, he would proceed to sort the rest of his sovereign lanes of product, ranging aisles one-six to nine-eleven. Frank felt like Sisyphus, but with none of the tragic glory.

Sometimes his manager chanced by in the mornings, smiling hollowly at Frank after checking, just to be sure, that there were no size fifteen bolts in the place dedicated to those of fourteen. More rarely, he would find that Frank had missed some small detail. On these occasions Frank would later be called into the back office and reminded that dozens of young and eager boys were looking for work in these times, and if Frank were to continue to fail in his duties, another individual with “more initiative” could readily take his place. During the day, certain customers did that unforgivable deed, unsorting Frank's wares, but in plain view of the worn salesmen, some even looking him directly in the eyes as they condemned him to another late evening, and a delayed return to his lonely apartment existence, punctuated only by the soft flashing glow of his comforting television.

This was the life of Frank mid afternoon to deep, deep evening five days a week. He rose long after the sun, ate a sparse breakfast of oatmeal or commercially packed noodles, donned one of five sets of worn, but nonetheless well-washed company clothes, and trundled off to work on the bus again. Frank did have vacation time and weekends, as per federal mandates, but having nothing better to do and no-one better to do better things with than his black and gray calico, Samuel tended to spend these reprieves as he spent his earlier evenings, numbing the hours with his old television set, forgetting all sense of location and even of time. In short, Frank's routine was as constant as it was boring as it was disheartening.

That was of course until, as you the reader should surely expect from such a story, for what kind of a storyteller writes only of humdrummings and dullery, Frank's destiny took a decided turn towards the bizarre.

On a day like any other, seven hours into Frank's shift and approaching closing time, Frank had been carefully monitoring aisle seven, even preemptively sorting the screws and nails that shoppers displaced, in order to assure himself at least one evening of early retirement. The birdlike murmur of spring couples shopping for minor embellishments to their home had quieted, and all that remained was a few snippets of conversation and the trundling clatter of several laden shopping carts traveling about his department. Frank was at the moment considering in extreme detail a crack running through the bare marble floor of aisle seven. It spanned one side of the aisle to the other, and from it ran dozens of smaller fractures in the store's walking surface. The cracks were just small enough to be trod over without recognition by the masses of shoppers who passed them, but having nothing better to do on those evenings like this one where Frank preemptively handled closing-time duties, Frank had recently taken to noticing such things. He thought the cracks must be somehow indicative of his current state; once he had dreamed of much more than a stone floors and angry customers. He couldn't quite frame the metaphor, but what of the screws, surely they must somehow...

Franks reverie was broken by the shuffle of feet further along the floor in aisle seven. Bad news. He looked up and saw a peculiarly dressed man. The person stood just below Franks average height, had a clever look about him, a welcoming, confident smile strangely offset by his darting eyes, and was garbed in a neatly pressed suit. This was so peculiar, as Frank hardly ever saw moderately well dressed individuals in his section, where only small numbers of any one good were sold. Certainly businessmen frequented the offices of his branch, and sometimes the proprietors of smaller firms would come to the back where order pickups were made, but hardly ever would the well dressed find their way into his aisles. More pressingly, the man held an empty bag and was eying the products of aisle seven.

Almost as if by random, this stranger's hands brushed over the boxes of goods arrayed in front of Frank, stopping suddenly to take loose pinches of items and deposit them in his bag. This resulted in a potpourri of steel, iron, and aluminum parts that made Frank's gut turn barrel rolls. The stranger continued, filling his bag to the brim, until he reached Frank, looked deliberately at him, and slowly moved to upend his bag into a single stall. Shuddering at the horrendous game of 52 card pickup that this would surely mandate of him, Frank took an involuntary tick forwards as his distress became evident in minute facial horror.

Surprising Frank, the man stopped his up-heaving motion without having spilled a single nail, and never breaking eye contact, laughed.

He ended the silence with a precise yet comforting drawl: “You don't know me, but in a sense I know you, and you'd probably like to hear me out.”

Freedom in A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange, an acclaimed film by Kubrick, asks us what it means for man to be free. Its protagonist lives a youth of what he calls "ultra-violence" where during the night he roams around with a gang of friends savagely beating who he pleases, stealing what he can, and generally being a curmudgeon. Eventually he accidentally murders someone, gets caught, and goes to prison. He wins release by agreeing to undergo a fictional two week behavior modification program which uses classical conditioning to force him into associating intense feelings of suffering with any violent or malicious act. He cannot willingly do wrong without excruciation. The film introduces a political dialogue surrounding his treatment where one party calls his state deprived of freedom and will, and the other ignores questions of will and claims that he is a better man as a result.

The question posed by the first party's assertion that he loses human freedom when compelled to action by psychological training is an interesting one. We are inclined to wonder whether he is free when so conditioned.

Several influential philosophers actually adopted views regarding freedom similar to the fictional dissidents of Clockwork Orange who find the protagonist not to be free. Locke for one argued essentially that to be free, we must do as we choose, which consists of picking our action, and also of having the ability to preform that action. This is interesting in the context of A Clockwork Orange because the film implies that were we psychologically trained to hate one act, then we would have our freedom, a freedom that we supposedly innately possess, abridged.

When our protagonist is trained not only to detest violence, but also the music playing while violent images are broadcast to him during his treatment, we are moved to feel outraged at the loss. The doctor overseeing him even has full capability to just flip the switch on the Beethoven, and thus save his subject the loss of something beautiful, but he chooses not to.

But why are we upset? We are upset because we have this belief that innately in us is the ability to, of our own volition, like classical music, hate classical music, and live as we see fit. Our perception of classical conditioning(1) as depriving us of this core freedom should set off warning bells in the context of freedom. Conditioning hardly stops when experimenting does. In the example of the doctor altering the movie's protagonist, we have this active entity that can be faulted for the process, but what of all the other times when we are so conditioned?

As I understand it, when we play a video game, win, receive praise, and then enjoy that game as a result, we are being conditioned. When we do something society conceives of as bad, are yelled at, and then avoid that action or feel guilty about it thereafter, we are being conditioned. When someone makes a comment on our clothing, and we associate that subconsciously into our perceptions of that item, we are being conditioned. This form of input determines how we respond to much of the world, and in this way our behavior is actively shaped by everything around us?

How does the omnipresence of conditioning matter for freedom? As you may have guessed, if we are going to say that an experiment removing someone's choice also takes away their liberty, then we never really were free. It seems that none of ou decision making criteria are free of the influence of condition. In the coming years, as our understanding of the human brain grows, it will be fascinating to find out just how deeply we are conditioned, but certainly to the extent that our sensibilities are purely products of experience, our actions are as inevitably determined as a rock's fall.

(1) As a simplified version, classical conditioning theory holds that when we experience something that innately makes us respond, like a strong flavor, in conjunction with something that doesn't, like someone whistling near us, eventually we will have responses that would normally accompany the flavor from hearing a whistler.

Finals

Hello my small reading populace. I will be on a brief hiatus for term papers and finals for the next week or so.

-Wilder

You've been hosen if you don't get frozen

Philosophers have often asked that, while their ideas may be repugnant, listeners consider them for their substance before rejecting them for being repulsive. Yes, you may hate an idea; yes you may tell its author, anyone who will listen, and everyone who will not about your hatred; yes, you may even reject an idea in time for thinking it dangerous, foul, or downright stupid, but it is hardly fair to do so without hearing it out, and honestly thinking first. This tolerant consideration would suit other areas, say life choices, well, and I ask you to give the following modest proposal its due consideration. I accept all resulting blame should you at least try to see it my way first.

So let's be forward.

Your days are numbered. One afternoon, perhaps soon, maybe later, you will keel over, choke on a carrot, suddenly become the victim of an unthinkable tragedy, or otherwise perish. At this time, assuming no God, your time is up. Swoof, nothing more, Blackness. This is the regrettable human condition.

Or is it?

Blaise Pascal once made a famous and oft cited wager, that he would rather live his life a Christian than not, for if the atheists were right and God did not exist, he would pay only a meager cost in lost prayer time, but if the Christians were right, he would benefit from eternal salvation. Pascal's wager was both too unlikely to yield fruit, and too expensive in terms of actual-life-time commitment for my tastes.

I wish to point out two seemingly unconnected sets of facts.

#1: Modern technology is wonderful.
We are rapidly growing as a technological culture. Mere decades ago, we had no widespread access to computers and the things that came with them, and since then we have rocketed forwards in nearly all fields from medicinal practice, to chemical research, to energy production. Two particularly promising areas of study are those of brain research and alternative fuel. The MRI, among many other recently developed techniques, finally allows researchers to directly sight human brains in action, and make inferences about their function. Moreover, our ability to sequence genes, which seems to be growing at pace with the exponential expansion of digital storage and processing power, is at an all time high. Assuming that we humans don't decide to wipe each other off the face of the earth, soon, perhaps years, or decades from now, but inevitably in the next few centuries, we will have an understanding of the human brain. This may, among other things, allow us to either provide repair, or life support, to a brain, the only thing a human really needs to exist. On the note of alternative fuel, we are rapidly getting closer to effective renewable, and one day cheaper, energy sources. Energy sources are key for powering all manner of things. Industrial freezers are one fine example.

#2: Now is actually a moderately ideal time, financially speaking, to die.
In the US, the tax on your worldly assets as you cease to be worldly is, it turns out, very low right now. The democrats failed to renew it in 2010, and so at the moment it is zero, and even once we renew it, the tax will affect only moderately wealthy Americans. (Those with holdings of US$1million or more)

So how does this affect you? Well, if we are in agreement that at some point you will go kerploof, and also that nothingness, which we prefer to avoid, will follow, then perhaps you desire a way out? Given the present progression of medical technology, it is a safe wager to say that if you remain intact, and in possession of a funding mechanism until we develop more sophisticated medicine, then resuscitation is entirely possible.

How to get there though? Freeze your corpse. Yes, for a tidy sum, you can almost assuredly arrange for your corpse to be frozen once you lie deceased. To do so, create a post-tax endowment sufficient to accrue interest at a rate exceeding inflation by the annual costs of a body-sized refrigerator unit and corresponding site. (1) Attaining this, you lie only a stipulation on your endowment that your frozen effigy be revived as an un-aging robo-cyborg-person once possible away from a chance at immortal life.

You may laugh at first, or shy away over the prospect of leaving your children with nothing, or object on moral grounds, for surely the money could go to charity, or at the very least the energy use will haunt future generations, and you may even simply reject the concept at face value.

But consider that my idea is not so different than Pascal's wager. Once you are dead, your money is obviously doing you no good, so just like the wager, this plan has almost no cost; in fact it costs less because you need not attend church services to implement it. On the other hand, just like Pascal's concept, the potential benefit is immeasurable. If successful, you simply will have more of the only absolutely limited resource you must face, time, and that is worth all of the money, happiness, whatever, in the world, for with unlimited time, you may gain also whatever else you may seek.

Now as for the above objections... If you are a parent, your children have benefited by you enough already; they exist and have been brought up. Should charitable potential hold you back from spending your hard earned funds to buy yourself a chance at living in a future where medicine may provide you with delicious robotic support for your brain, just think of the good you could do with two, three, four and even greater multiples of your present life. It would be selfish not to opt for the robo-option. Have qualms about energy use? Devote some part of your life to the green movement to offset the cost. There is no real excuse for non-participation, so live life fully, meet each day as your last, breathe the fine nectar that is the running juice of the world, and also have a sweet backup plan. (2)


(1)You will have to reach the moderately wealthy bracket to do this, but if you are to kick the can soon, all is well with taxation, and if not, you are probably well off enough for such an endowment anyways.
(2)I have jokingly proposed this idea several times before, but never quite gotten around to putting it into lengthy text. Disclaimed.

Current stance on Saturday night studying

From a broken heart to a broken system

Dearest Postmodernism,

The two short decades since we first met have felt like jolly centuries. I remember with no lack of warm regard our young days together. They would, from across the room, tell me that we should be nice to everyone, be accepting of other cultures, and never hold ourselves in such a pulpit of high regard so as to exclude the voices of others. I saw traces of you around then, bored in my desk, shyly admiring your gentle loveliness.

Later, as we read stories of magical realism, race relations, and cultural connection in high school, we had so much. I felt that you were the end of everything. Just the glimpse of such a shining ideal showed to me that all other aspirations were senseless, that only through rejecting our ability to find truly objective truth could we abandon pretense, that we belonged together, and all the while you twittered along. Ah youth, the flowers, the butterflies, the warm summer days, and foremost, the mental conceptualizations of cultural relativism's latent influence on our ideology.

I knew that things were becoming serious when you followed me to college. We spent long evenings cuddling together in the grass as the smooth sun set, and longer nights struggling through freshman essays, with you helping me forwards all the while. It seemed as if nothing would ever change.

But then you did, or rather, I realized what you really are. One day a close friend asked me about you; he knew we spent so much time together after all; he asked me what you were like, who you spent your time with, what you were all about. That's when the trouble first began. I couldn't tell him. It wasn't that anything was particularly embarrassing, or that there were no stories of the two of us and our time together. No, the problem was that I really don't even know you at all. I stammered, “Well, she likes to talk about Foucalt, sometimes Derrida, she spends her time ensuring that overbearing discourses don't dominate the sphere of life, and she can say something surprising on any topic .” My friend and I looked at each other for a moment, him slightly confused, me horrified that I knew only so little, and with a slow draining feel setting into my stomach. Hurriedly, I looked for a source of my confusion.

Had I been too self centric and never listened while you talked? Surely not, for you were always speaking so much, and I had listened to what you had to say. Were you lying to me, hiding yourself? This couldn't be so, for we had spent enough time together for this to be impossible; I simply would have noticed. What could it have been then? Then the unthinkable quietly asserted itself, that you really had no substance at all.

I thought further on those things that were supposedly so you. In their time, certain literature, criticism of literature, film, photography, music, dance, poetry, policymaking, policy punditry, news, protest, cultural movements, and even fashion movements had all supposedly manifested as products of your self. How could one be so many different things, unless, unless you were really none of these, and just a piece of academic lingo? I tried so hard to tell myself that you were something more substantial than a flashy phrase, than a trend, and really would have been able to find comfort despite never knowing your true self, but this was but the beginning.

I realized that you always hung around with those snooty academic types. Part of our original infatuation was your appeal to the masses. You were open and accepting of all, or said you were, but there you were, spending your time with professor hootensnoot, dancing with doctor debonair, all the while quietly wrinkling your nose at the common man. I noticed how very nuanced were your terms and habits, your technical jargon, and it occurred that not only could no one clearly outline you, but most could not even engage in your dialogue. For a girl who spent her time telling everyone that we ought to sever the dominant discourse, this was a surprise, for it looked very much as if you were perpetuating it. But for you, even this I could forgive.

And then you started to get possessive. I can handle, and actually embrace, some closeness; we did come to college at Whitman in part to be together after all, but what you have been doing lately is frankly disturbing. You sneak into all of my classes, and just sit there, watching me. In English subjects, no one's analysis is wrong, everything is excellent and engaging, a great yarn, and all this for you. In debate, everyone is an evil, ecosystem hating, simulacrum perpetrating, colonialist, anthropocentric, fear mongering, abusively statist, theivingly capitalist, chauvinist, and this is because of your presence. In fact, the only place you don't chase me to is Modern Philosophy, and I don't doubt that you would if you could, but being postmodern, you can't quite slip into modernity. It has been getting uncomfortable.

If this were not enough, certain things you have been saying are, well, a little bit crazy. People talk. I am certain that you mean well, dear, but not every book is Fruedian, not every imaginary tree, gun, walking path, or representation of power phallic, and not every children's book about gender and sex. Your insistence that all things are subjective bothers me even moreso. Certain things, that the sky is blue, that one plus one is two, that Seattle cannot have a respectable sports team in any one activity for more than three seasons at a time, that I am now writing a letter which pains me much, are just plainly true. You act as if everything is this vague societal construct, that we are fully entitled to make the wildest and freest extrapolations, since after all, everything is all false anyways, that probability didn't exist, and it worries me. How can I lay these blatant facts aside in good faith?

Look, I may not know the precise score, but I am no fool. I know that if you poke a bear, the odds are high it will eat you, that certain chemical processes almost always work the same way, and that when authors write a book, they do initially mean something and there is at least one reading that we can find more probable than others. It is absurd to assert that we should talk every which way about everything, as it is to say that dice end up differently sometimes, so a one is as likely to be rolled as two through six combined. I say this as no offhand comment, for at night I lie awake and ponder us. Postmodernity, your disassociation from the real world pains me.

I would tell you that it's not you; however we both know that it is. I read modern philosophy books in class now, and whenever Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume make a reference to the intangible nature of reality, I think of you, and become sad. It feels like reading a story to which I already know the horrible ending. There really is only one way to put this: we both know what has to happen. Postmodernity, I have found something better, I like it, and I am not ashamed. Empericism just feels so right, and with that I must say farewell. I'm sure you'll find many ways to interpret this.

Regretfully, Tim

Random snippets of disjointed conclusions

It took an evening moment of pulling random records out of a shelf arrangement (not that this act itself had anything to do with the resulting conclusion) to help me realize something plain simple, and unreasonably relevant. Bifurcation will be the death of us all.

I find myself this night in an amateur radio station. In the back of this station lies a tasty, midsized labyrinth of hard copied music. To pass the time we are doing a short radio segment. The arrayed dials and latent possibilities of radio are somehow unable to distract me my core, entirely unrelated, observation regarding bifurcation.

We all have only a highly limited span of time in which to do things. I, and I suspect you as well, have an odd tendency to take on all kinds of commitments. These commitments are typically the types of things that seem highly entertaining, have a strong pull, and usually are in fact somewhat redeeming. Now conventional wisdom would assert that over-committing life's plate is just never an ideal choice. Up to this point I have done a fantastic job of completely ignoring conventional wisdom, and sampling as many scrumptious activity morsels as I could possibly sustain. ((Snippets of radio, smidgens of jogging, scrumpets of schoolwork, some reading, far too much collegiate debate, and this blog among others, should it be highly interesting to you.) I know it's probably not, but I like parenthesis too much not to include fun facts.)

Anyways, taking on too many things robs you of the ability to excel in any one. It would seem to me that each person is endowed with some certain measure of natural ability, and that to exercise that ability to its peak, they must also commit solitary attention to it. The tendency to simply not do this though, is the bane of highly interesting achievements everywhere, and as such should be avoided.

That is all.

Chatroullete

Chatroullete is a website that allows you to videochat with random strangers in rapid secession, or rather, one of the foulest, oddest, most variable, and least forgettable experiences on the more trafficked parts of ye olde internet.

The basic system works by having users load themselves into a hopper that connects two of its members at a time to chat. No names are given, only a feed, and at any point either partner may cut the feed and move on. Usually Chatroulleters have their feed on an autorestart, so as soon as one encounter ends, another instantly begins.

As you can probably predict, some absolutely disgusting video feeds tend to pop up now and then. One of the more common obscenities is some random person tugging the old boat in clear visibility. I personally wonder what always prompts the nastier minority of Chatroullete's denizens to get indecent, inappropriate, and otherwise naked for a yet unknown audience of random internet goers. Perhaps they enjoy the aspect of being watched? Maybe extreme loneliness drives them? In any case, the bulleted chamber of Chatroullete is definitely there.

Worse still are the stealthier taboo breakers. Often a screen will at first appear blacked out, and then fade into one type of revolting scene or another. Another common ploy is for users to seem conversational at first, and then slowly start stripping or what have you as a conversation goes on. There is actually no way to tell what percentage of the base is there for the sex appeal, because so many people are slowrolling. Here is one such example; note that the fellow is already shirtless to show off the old guns.



After trying the site to make more memorable a boring evening on several occasions, I noticed something funny about people who use it. At first, someone sees something that they really wished they had rather not, shies away and exclaims something to the effect of "Ewwwwww!". Moments later they come back and press next to find another dialogue. Apparently disturbing acts actually being preformed can be just as riveting as those in fiction and film.

If you are not squeamish, and willing to put up with brief moments of revulsion, I strongly suggest that you at least give this novel concept a try. At the very least it will probably be difficult to forget, and for me, that is enough.

And there was murder in their eyes

When I woke up yesterday, still bleary at around 2:30, I remembered that the renaissance fair was happening. Every year a gang of community members puts on a renaissance Europe themed fair here, and I make it a point to at least go and have a look; it is certainly memorable.

The day smiled on Walla Walla with a light breeze and clear, warm sky. As a direct result, many families had chosen to come scope out the event. With families come kids.

Boff (I hope that is spelled correctly) fighting is a mainstay element of the fair. In this activity, participants whack one another with soft weapons. Boffing represents a unique opportunity to live out the inner nerd-fantasy that so many hold dear.

Most adults and teens are relatively guarded in their boffing. They choose to view it as something of a sport to justify it against the naysayers and bally-hoers. The kids, especially the ones present by the swarm at Renfair, are entirely submersed.

You can get a clear idea of what these kids think is epic just by watching a few boff matches for fun. Completely oblivious of the outside world, they run and scream around the arena, stabbing one another in the back, fleeing from the enemy, seizing victory with ruthless cries. One kid kept attacking the others once they were down, pantomiming a bloody murder, another, on victory, held up his weapon above his head, looked directly at the audience of students and parents, and let loose a resounding victory scream, which was pretty humorous.

It becomes immediately evident also that the young'uns are playing the same video games and watching many of the same nerd-movies that the old'uns do. They seem to know exactly what to do to look 'cool' with their weapons, and they also don't hesitate at all to slaughter the other kids once in the mindset of the game. Kyle, a friend involved in the community that helps implement the fair, mentioned that one wee visitor from the prior year kept running up behind the other children, and using two weapons to 'cut off their head' from behind. It's hard to say whether violent media makes people more violent, but with certainty the next generation gobbles it up.

Also striking was the fact that many of the adult bystanders were apprehensive to take part. You could see them looking out and thinking about it, after all the actual participants seemed to be having a lot of fun, but fear of looking silly was sufficient to constrain these people to guilty sideways glances and non-participation. The invisible restraint was made especially apparent here, since the younger set was so visibly unaffected. Personally, I lament that we have so many standards that prevent members of society from doing the most interesting and memorable thing available. Maybe we would all be better served to randomly scream supremacy more often.

Hip hop talent exhibited at Tea Party rally

Untitled from elizabeth glover on Vimeo.

The culture conflict here is overwhelming. Look at the facial expressions on the audience.

The Tax Man Cometh!!!

Sullivan lifted this off of Wonkette.com - it is fantastic. Sure, you may disagree with a certain policy of Obama's, but just passively doing so with your vote is not enough! He is going to steal your breath and sneezes with a reproducing, multiplying hoard of tax collectors bent only on the total subjection of American liberties everywhere. Stop him now by visiting the RNC's website!

My life is a big red line going from bed, to class, to food, to bed

If you were to create an aerial heatmap of your last several months of time, what would it look like? How would your time be clustered? Would it pulsate around a single hub, burning itself deep into a rut; would it assume the form of a loose red haze, networking out every which way; would it be something in between? My map would be a big, fat, artery tracing a triangle pattern from my house, to class, to food, to home.

Why is this the case? Routine. I find it incredibly easy to draft up a basic itinerary and then follow that come hell or high water. On reflection, our society itself is rather well structured to compel such behavior. From a very young age we are told to always have a plan, and always stick to it.

For me at lest, a single plan never really acts properly to plot out life though. I at one point start doing something for one set of reasons, and then as time quickly passes, the role that thing has in relation to my goals completely changes. The realization that this has happened lags weeks, months, or even years behind an actual change however. I believe that we can attribute the delay to routines being seductively simple to follow, and belligerently hard to break.

Taking the example of walking to class, coming home, reading random blogs and Youtubing, then sleeping, the difficulty of breaking pattern versus the ease of maintaining presents itself. In most cases, I continue to do as I do for the pure reason that it is what I do. Rowing took up four years, which naturally led into college and debate, and I find myself moving forwards as an automatic mechanism, responding to surroundings without considering fully why.

I implicate the internet provide for its absurd ability to entertain in order to explain this lack of 'why'. When trying to unwind from a day, the go-to activity is rarely self consideration, so much as full immersion in stimulating media. While there exists more than enough time to say, go for a walk and think about the state of things, not doing so takes less energy.

Of late I have been making a conscious effort to branch out my heat map, and also consider actively why I am doing what I do. Nothing earthshaking has yet resulted from this pursuit, but at least certain obvious self-suggestions, such as 'stop playing video games for upwards of five daily hours' come quickly to light. I suspect also that even two or three twenty minute periods of free time to reflect will prune out more than their weight of unfortunate choices.

Give it a try; reconsider something that you find to be obvious and central to your life. Why did you begin to participate, why do you do so now, and is this still valuable?

The Hijacked Post (in which Tim learns the value of clearing passwords out of his roommate's browser)

Dear blogger/Tim-

I have to drive some prospective debate students to Pasco in a few minutes, so I'll make this quick.

The internet is a dangerous, dangerous place. Yes, there are a precious few genius sites that enlighten the world like synapses in the minds of Descartes, Kant - even Spinoza. The majority of the internet is a slum where kittens are the preferred street drug, violence is perpetuated through "fail" videos, and sex is sold cheap.

Yes, this is our modern-day wild west.

Take, for example, this site, unvarnished.com, that allows co-workers to post negative reviews about you without your control. The site wreaks of dickishness. Their address isn't even unvarnished.com, but rather "getunvarnished.com" – a move that prompted the actual owner of their false domain name to post an apology due to the preponderance of misdirected traffic.

I must be off, but Tim's password will live on in my MacBook browser. I'm logging out so he/you can't clear it while I'm in Pasco.

- ZORRO

Braaaiins

If you find yourself living on a college campus, you are highly advised to play Human Versus Zombies. The basic gist of the game is that everyone playing, save one zombified individual, starts out as a human. Play takes place over the entirety of a campus, save classrooms and dining halls, and a game lasts for some predetermined amount of time, usually a few weeks. The first zombie player attempts to tag human players as those students walk to and from class. Whenever the original zombie catches someone, that someone also becomes a zombie, and tries to infect more humans in turn. A zombie must catch and 'feed' on a human every so often, or they starve. The game ends when time expires, all humans are zombies, or all zombies starve. Most variations of the game also give humans the ability to temporarily disable zombies by shooting them with foam darts or the like, thus inspiring countless nerdy spine shivers of joy.

Why play? The answer is simple and compelling. To put to rest boredom.

Life contains myriad boring moments. Yes, a ten to fifteen minute walk from one's room to one's place of education can sometimes be uplifting and scintillating, but by virtue of happening every day, these walks have a definite tendency to grow hackneyed.

Picture two scenarios - the first - that you grumble out of bed, dress yourself, and take a slow boring walk to morning class - the second that you grumble out of bed, and stalk cautiously across a minefield of potential shame, clinging desperately to the scrap of victory that is your human status. The second scenario makes tasks as plain as crossing an open field between buildings into an exhilarating challenge.

If your campus puts on such a game, join it. It's not like you were going to be doing anything better with your 10 minute walks.

P.S. The new sleeping pattern has proved itself to be excellent. On Tuesday nights I ignore it however, as my earlier class comes at 1:00 on Wednesday.

Trolololo and trying to get things done whilst tired

For some reason this clip is oddly enjoyable: http://trololololololololololo.com/

Having said that...

I have come to the conclusion that a time shift is really in order. Up until now my sleep pattern has been to pass out around 1-3am, and wake up at 10am. The upside of this is of course that I get to find sweet stuff like trololo until 3am, and the downside that I don't sleep very much. It's hard to evaluate whether or not the pearly treasures of the internet outweigh rest, but I suspect that this may not be so. My reason for this inkling occurred today, wherein I received quite a railing for what, in all fairness, was a god awful paper, written in the depths of the night, and then also took a three hour nap at about 6:30.

Apparently common sense is accurate on this one. I actually tried for about 20 minutes to find something more juicy, but really there does not appear to be any extremely accessible research on the subject, so I will trust the grapevine. It seems at least from that paper, and on reflection, dozens others like it, that there is an undeniable correlation between using the time late into the evening to get things done, and doing so poorly. Also, some obvious benefits of conking out around 10-11am include:

1. Getting to eat breakfast.
2. Going for morning walks.
3. Using the Internets while the sun rises, and coincidentally while no one else is online to bog down the wireless.
4. Avoiding surprise awakenings when housemates decide it is time to play catch in the kitchen above me.
5. Having the ability to sign up for classes that start before 11am or so.
6. Clocking nine hours of sleep.
7. Writing fewer boring blogs due to sleep deprivation.

So with that in mind, onwards to bed.