And in other news...

Mitch McConnell filibustered his own proposal on the senate floor today. I don't even know how to react to that.

Two similes

1. Finding a home for a creative impulse is like sex.

2. Re-working and polishing to reach a finished work is like giving birth; it's painful, harrowing, and exhausting, but the end result makes it all worth it.

Dear media

Dear media,

Politics is not a team sport. Republicans vs. Democrats is not the same thing as Red Sox vs the Yankees. Focus on the issues.

Last page of Norwegian Wood

This passage really resonated with me; it's probably my favorite bit from the whole novel. It's funny that endings do that sometimes—a story drags on... and on... and then flowers into something beautiful just as it reaches its close.

Possible spoilers ahead (but not really).

I phoned Midori.

"I have to talk to you" I said. "I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning."

Midori responded with a long, long silence - the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: "Where are you now?"

Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

Want to do better on a math test? Try feeling depressed.

[I]n most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits.

...

So what could be so useful about depression? Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.

...

Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.

...

But is there any evidence that depression is useful in analyzing complex problems? For one thing, if depressive rumination were harmful, as most clinicians and researchers assume, then bouts of depression should be slower to resolve when people are given interventions that encourage rumination, such as having them write about their strongest thoughts and feelings. However, the opposite appears to be true. Several studies have found that expressive writing promotes quicker resolution of depression, and they suggest that this is because depressed people gain insight into their problems.

1. "Depression's Evolutionary Roots: Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages" by Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson Jr.

Playlist for tomorrow

So, I have a job interview tomorrow. But instead of preparing for that tonight, I spent the last hour making a mix CD for the 50+ minute drive:

Kaki King - "Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be a Bad Person?"

"..." 39

When I was 28 years old, I came back home for the first time in six years fully aware that I was the black sheep. I had rejected my faith. I had rejected Tucson, Arizona. I was the only one in the family who wasn't married. I was the only one who couldn't even speak Spanish.

And I was just sitting with my dad in a booth at a diner, and it should have been just this kind of innocent thing, where I'm visiting after six years, and it's nice to catch up. But it wasn't like that. We were facing each other. We both had, as it happens, cowboy hats and cowboy boots. And I remember thinking, this is a showdown. Because my dad and I were at war. My dad didn't know this, but I was at war with him. I was at war with all Christians, and I was just waiting for an excuse to fire a shot.

I'd been raised an evangelical Christian-- you know, conservative, Bible believing Christian-- and I loved it so much that I said, I'm going to be a pastor. I'm going to learn everything I can learn. And I went off and I majored in religious studies in college. And from my very first scholarly class in the history of the Bible, my faith began to crumble until there was nothing left. And I now had this game I could play, where if you open a Bible to any page, I could find five flaws in it.

So I'd spent this entire time, not just with my dad, but certainly this particular evening, just waiting for a chance. Just mention the virgin birth, just once, and I'll tell you it's a mistranslation from Isaiah. Just mention Second Peter and I can prove to you it's a second century forgery. You know, say anything at all, please, please, about the Antichrist, revelation, the end times, anything like that, and I have a screed set up that's so blistering it would make Billy Graham feel ridiculous. And I had all this ammunition, and I couldn't wait to use it. I was just looking for an excuse. And it sort of turned me into a jackass.

Now what my dad didn't know was that one of the reasons I was so excited is I actually was just coming off a victory. The previous night, I had argued my brother-in-law to a standstill. He had mentioned something about how proud he was about being a Christian, because everything in the Bible was so scientifically accurate. And I went a little nuts and I said, "Oh yeah, what about this thing?" And there's this tiny little section, just one sentence in like, Exodus, where the Israelites are fighting the Amorites or somebody, and God does a miracle where he makes the sun stand still for an entire day, in order to give the Israelites a chance to recover, and give them more time to fight.

And I told my brother-in-law, "You really believe this? You believe this actually happened? That God stopped the entire planet from rotating, stopped gravity, all of things that would have to happen for the sun to stand still? Is that the most sensible thing the most powerful being in the world can do?" And my brother-in-law said, "Well, OK, that's weird, and I wish it weren't in there, but if I doubt that, where do I stop?"

And that, I knew, was as close as I was going to get to him saying, "You're right and I'm wrong." I remember looking at the clock, and it was five in the morning. I had argued this one point for seven hours. And I realized, this is like my job. I just put in a full working day. Obviously, I was obsessed.

At the time I was 28 years old. I was also a virgin, and I'd been a virgin because the Bible says so, because I thought Jesus wanted it that way. And then Jesus vanished on me. I had spent all of my life trying to be good, trying to do the right thing, and, you know, trusting that this would be rewarded. And then my faith collapsed.

And there's no betrayal like losing 10 years of your life, you know, your sexual peak basically. I'm never going to get that back. And I was furious. And I didn't know who to blame. But I knew I could help other people from having the same horrible experience. And I was looking at my brother-in-law thinking, you know, we were arguing about Genesis, but in my mind I was thinking, there is no way you have a good sex life. You know, because the Bible doesn't care, and pleasure doesn't even matter in the Bible. But I can save you.

And with this kind of exciting, thrilling victory still kind of humming in the back of my head, I was sitting there with my dad in the diner. Because a brother-in-law is one thing, a dad is someone else. I needed to save him. And so I said, "So, dad, what's your life like right now?" And he said, "Well, I found a new church home." And I heard church, and I perked up, and I was ready to go. But I thought, eh, church, not much to argue about there, people go to church, OK, it's nothing biblical.

And he said, "You know, it's a small church, and the pastor found out that I play the accordion, and he made me the music minister, that'll be nice." And again, I was like, [? tightened, ?] but I thought, "Meh, music ministry, no, nothing there." And then he said, "You know, this other kind of interesting thing is happening, I've been praying about it, and I think I'm going to be a missionary." And that struck a chord. I sat upright, and I went, "Oh really? A missionary? Where are you going to go?" And then he said, "Oh, Spain."

And I snapped. I said, "Oh, of course. Of course you're going to go to Spain. That is so arrogant. Only an evangelical Christian would say, oh, those poor benighted Spaniards need to learn about Jesus." "You know," I said, "evangelical Christianity as a way, the whole model of salvation that you guys preach, wasn't even around till the 19th century. You claim to represent all of Christianity, and you're really just the tiny sliver at the end of the iceberg. And you know, the model of salvation you're even selling is so weird. Conversion should be the response of the whole person to a call from God on a deep personal level, and evangelical Christians have turned it into this transaction, like a merchandise, like a, try our God and your life will be better. Say this prayer, and now here's the merchandising table. It's just horrible."

"And dad," I said, "You're saving people? What are you saving them from? Hell, may I guess? Because let me point something else out to you. Hell is a mistranslation from the King James of four completely different words for the afterlife. Gehenna, and hades, and sheol, and King James just kind of rounded them all up to hell. And the idea of eternal torture has no precedent in the Old Testament. It has never made any moral sense. And the second you believe in hell, you're undermining everything good. Because a morality based in fear can only bring out the worst in people, and never their best."

And I just rambled on like this. And I knew, essentially, while I was doing this, I was also assaulting his dream. You know, saying everything he was excited about, that he was sharing with me, was misbegotten, was a bad idea, was morally corrupt. But all he had to do was admit I was right and then we'd be OK. And I really didn't know what was going to happen now, because I'd just fired the first shot.

And he just kind of quietly let me do my thing. And when I'd settled down and, you know, gotten my peace out, he said, "David, I'm really proud of everything you've done. And I'm really glad that you enjoy studying all these things, and thinking all these thoughts. But I've got to tell you, before I became a Christian, I was miserable. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to get a divorce from your mom."

And I remembered, suddenly, like I was six years old, and I was back in the car, and I remember driving in the station wagon with my dad from South Dakota to Tucson, because dad had had a miserable life, had a nervous breakdown, he was rebuilding everything. And he was holding a cigarette out the window the whole ride down. I remember, as a child, this had had a strong impression on me. About halfway through the trip, he simply threw away all of his cigarettes, never picked them up again. That was his conversion, that was the start of the change in his life.

And my dad continued, he said, "You know, when I first went to Grace Chapel," which was the church where he had converted, he said, "I thought those people were crazy." And when I was eight years old, I had gone to Grace Chapel with him. And this was a charismatic church. The kind where people raise their hands, and they speak in tongues, and they anoint people with oil, and they pray for miraculous healings, and people roll on the ground sometimes, or dance.

And my dad said, "You know, I was just staring at the stuff these people were doing, and I thought, this is crazy. But I could not ignore the love in that room, and the care they had for each other. And I kept going back, and I kept going back. And I wanted it to make sense to me. And finally one night, I prayed, and I said, God, if I have to cut my own head off to be happy, I will do it. So I know you've gone to college, and you've learned all these things, but here's what I know, David. I followed Jesus and the lord gave me a family."

My parents really had almost gotten divorced. I remember one time, I ran across a notebook where my dad and my mom had divided everything up on a piece of paper. You know, who was going to get the TV and that kind of thing. And they'd gotten that close. And then my dad converted, and he said, "No, we're sticking this out. I'm going to make this work." And it had.

And my brother too, you know, he's deeply conservative, listens to all the kind of, you know, right wing talk radio and so forth. And he's got to be convinced that I'm going to hell. But this one time, I was on this trip, and I was a student, and he gave me $300 and he said, "Don't bother repaying it."

And I remember looking at my dad, and I thought-- I had sort of expected to argue like I had with my brother-in-law. You know, not to win, but to come to some kind of armistice. You know, some kind of truce where we're like, "Well, we'll agree to disagree, but I see your point. It's a good point." I hadn't expected to lose completely, because you can't argue with decency. You can't argue with goodness.

The thing about the Bible is it's huge. I could poke at it because I could pick at anything I wanted-- you know, talking snakes, virgin birth-- but eventually, I came around to thinking, well, maybe religion doesn't have to be consistent. Maybe you can just like it enough for it to be good. You know, maybe religion can be something more like-- like I'm a big Star Trek fan, and if you asked me, I would say like, I love Star Trek. But if you asked me to defend individual episodes, I would be at a loss, because I can't go to bat for everything Star Trek did. I just love the concept.

And maybe religion could be like that. So what I said to my dad was, "Oh, look, here comes the waitress." And we got our Sprite, and had our hamburgers, and we looked at each other, raised the glass, had a bite, and my dad didn't know this, but we were having communion.

—David Ellis Dickerson

1. Transcript from This American Life

Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012)

1. Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died
2. Adrienne Rich: Resolution Amid The 'Turbulence'

The Story of the Monkeys of Shitty Island

From The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami:

"Do you know the story of the monkeys of the shitty island?" I asked Noburo Wataya.

He shook his head, with no sign of interest. "Never heard of it."

"Somewhere, far, far away, there’s a shitty island. An island without a name. An island not worth giving a name. A shitty island with a shitty shape. On this shitty island grow palm trees that have also have shitty shapes. And the palm trees produce coconuts that give off a shitty smell. Shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they love to eat these shitty-smelling coconuts after which they shit the world’s foulest shit. The shit falls on the ground and builds up shitty mounds, making the shitty palm trees that grow on them even shittier. It’s an endless cycle.”

I drank the rest of my coffee.

"As I sat here looking at you," I continued, "I suddenly remembered the story of this shitty island. What I'm trying to say is this: A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself with its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it - even if the person himself wants to stop it."

Banksy on advertising

From Cut It Out:

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

Notebook doodle

"Adjectives of Order"

Found this in an old document folder:

Adjectives of Order
by Alexandra Teague

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering

streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard,
she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread
from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade

is essential to bread . He copied this down, but
he wanted to know if his brothers were lost before
older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern

downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern.
When he first arrived, he did not know enough English
to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part

of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic
leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color.
Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding

and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal.
After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years
of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.

A brief thought on art and culture

(This was supposed to be the basis for a poem, but out of laziness, I decided to just write it out as a rant.)

One idea that has been occupying my thoughts lately is how bizarre it is that arts can be seen as embodying culture. For example, when someone says that Katy Perry's music reflects some large segment of American culture, or that a community should do more to publicly fund the arts in order to "promote culture."

The reason that this strikes me as so odd is that, in most cases, nothing is more private and individualistic than art and the process by which it comes into being. Every step of the way, from developing one's style to determining subject matter to execution, is a display of individualism. And so at best, it seems to me that collective culture, as far as the arts are involved, is really a constellation of different, radical individualisms.

Or... if we say that American culture, for example, is defined, in large part, by diversity, then no particular works of art or music or dance could be called representative of it. It would be defined by the available spectrum, so to speak, not the individual works... which is a roundabout way of saying that there are no creators of culture, only contributors.

There's nothing so tragic

There's nothing so tragic
as a comedian
who isn't funny
**ehhmhhrussellbrandjeffdunhamcarlosmenciacarrottopjaylenomartinlawrencedanecook—excuseme**
whose talent is confidence
but not comedy,

and the same for poetry
where the hypocrite-poet,
sweat-stained with introspective intensity,
prefers editorializing
with line breaks,
like this.