Like Jesus camp, but... different.

In other news, after yesterday's funeral, i've decided that the whole dying thing is over-rated and that people shouldn't do it anymore.

conflict of interests

Sorry, I wanted to post something celebratory and exciting in honour of National High Five Day (my favourite annual holiday - perhaps even more favourite than Halloween), but I've been a tad melancholy all afternoon. A friend of mine died on Saturday in Iraq when the Humvee whose turret he was manning rolled in a simple, stupid traffic accident. He was a lance corporal (whatever that means) in the marines and was in the military police, hoping to essay that role into a civilian career. He was young and I was one of his youth group leaders. He was a good kid and I miss him, knowing that I won't see him again in this lifetime.

But just because I'm sad doesn't mean you have to be. *high fives all around*

Things I Don't Like, Vol. 2

Several years ago, when Honda released the Element, I was horrified. Not just horrified that a car that ugly existed. Not just horrified that someone thought real hard and decided that this was a design worth submitting. Not just horrified that a company with all manner of stop-gap measures would eventually approve of the car's creation. No, I was moreover horrified when I realized that people were buying this hideous car in droves. I saw them everywhere. I've heard them called vanlets and econoboxes. Whatever the name, they are a visual blight.

Compound that sense of horror and revulsion x4 and you're approaching an accurate description of the wave that washed over me a couple years back when Toyota unveiled the Scion xB (the xBox). And again, people were buying these things as if the continuation of metrosexual/emergent church life depended on it.

A more hideous car may have stalked the globe at some point in history, but that beast of a car is one that I have yet to see. The Scion xB fell out of the ugly tree and got whacked with every single branch on its way down. I'm not going to say it has no aesthetic. It does. It's more just an, I dunno, antaesthetic. Really, I get it. I get that the xB is an economical storage and passenger solution. But did they have to make it ugly?

In any case, the oppressive carmakers and ridiculous consumers are at it again. It's the new Landcruiser thingy: Toyota's FJ Cruiser. Dimensionally, there's nothing wrong with it. It's the paint. Now there are several options available and a couple aren't bad at all. But the one I am seeing at every other intersection is the bright blue one with the white top. *chills*

Look, I realize that this car is meant to be off-ridden into deserts and jungles and places like that. And for that purpose, the blue is wonderful. I imagine a bright blue FJ Cruiser would be visible in a desert for miles. I have no complaint about it in that environment. It's the suburban streets of Orange County where the car has no place (and yet has found a place). These are mothers. Bunco players. Soccer moms. These are neither adventurers nor people who have any need of the rugged-terrain-eating capabilities of the car. These are the people who would be driving Hummers in another life (one comprised chiefly of wealth), ferrying their three children from lacrosse practices to piano lessons to youth group to sleepovers.

At least Hummers are more sensibly painted for civilian use. Black. Excalibur grey. Even canary yellow is a better choice for suburban use. *sigh*

Things I Like, Vol. 1

Near my office, on the corners of a particular intersection, there are four works of public "art." There is nothing particularly artistic about them. Nonetheless, I find them to be awe-inspiring. And rad. I love them. I love my special chia effigies.

And yes, these photos were taken while I waited at the stoplight after picking up a cinnamon role on the way to work.

Land of Temporary Sideburns

Since its been awhile since I've posted any glamour shots and Wendy claims I'm balding, I thought it was about time. Have a good weekend.

PCABCO: Protecting Us from the Mechanized Horde

Reading in the PCA's Book of Church Order, I came across this gem:

50-2. The reading of the Holy Scriptures in the congregation is a part of the public worship of God and should be done by the minister or some other person.

"By the minister or some other person"? Essentially, it seems, their primary concern is a) that the Word be read and b) that it not be read either by animals or inanimate objects. After due consideration, I suppose this is a valid concern with the gradual increase in society's reliance upon technological improvement. In fact, the foresight of the PCA's authorship is remarkable when considering the dawning robot menace. We've got to have the structures in place to deny artificial intelligences the same rights and privileges that we ourselves enjoy. And I'm glad to see that my denomination has taken this problem well in hand.

Silly

GameStooge (GameStooge?) has a silly, silly article about one of my favourite games. In it the writer complains about the Guitar Hero franchise's demand that a player unlock new songs through a process of leveling. His gripe is that though the packaging advertises the availability of songs like "Sweet Child of Mine" and "YYZ," such songs are not available until you have unlocked them by proving you've got the stuff on easier songs. The author, therefore, alleges false advertising and decries the illegality of Red Octane's marketing (Red Octane produced Guitar Hero I and II).

For those who don't get it but are still reading along, here's how Guitar Hero works. Though there are about 70 playable songs ("over 70 jaw dropping tracks," as the packaging declares), only a small number of songs are available when you first begin to play. I think it's like eight songs or something. These songs (songs like "I Love Rock and Roll" and "I Wanna Be Sedated") are pretty easy and as the player succeed in burning down the house while playing these covers, other songs become available. These songs are slightly more difficult to play, but once mastered, a new level of songs become available. Once a song is made available, you can play it any time you'd like.

So really, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the problem is here. Guitar Hero, as I've presented it, is no different from any other video game. I don't begin Super Mario Bros. as Super Mario. I have to work to get it. I don't begin Final Fantasy with a party of intrepid explorers. I have to work to get one. I don't begin World of Warcraft with a pet. I have to work to get one. It's kinda the nature of the playing field. Unless you're talking old school games like Space Invaders or Missile Command. Those were pretty straightforward and you mostly had everything from the start that you'd have after playing through ten levels (well, you would necessarily have the cold sweats like you would after ten levels, but...).

Essentially Guitar Hero's marketing that reads "over 70 jaw dropping tracks" is comparable to saying "over 70 jaw dropping levels." This is pretty much the way things work across the board in the video game industry. It's expected. The World of Warcraft box suggests that players can combat the Black Dragon of Blackrock Spire and the undead hoards of Stratholme; two things I have never been able to do as my level has never been high enough. Half-Life 2's packaging promises "new weapons," but the player won't see them until he battles through several levels of play. And most game boxes show screen caps of scenes that don't play out 'til much later in the game - as end-game content is generally more dynamic and picturesque than low-level material. Heck, the scene featured on the front cover of Riven (the first sequel to Myst) shows a world unreachable until the midpoint of the game (and then, never again).

So yeah, the author of the GameStooge article, like so many before him, serves to make me feel better about myself. So yay for that I guess...

Things I Don't Like, Vol. I

It being Easter week, I was looking back over an old post from a few years back when me and Brandon went with the whole office down to Irvine Meadows Verizon Amphitheater for "Easter in the Amphi Meadows." One of the featured singers (this guy named Santos), belted out an old, familiar tune, "Were You There"

Hm, I should restate: An old, unfortunately familiar tune.

Seriously, I'm trying to think of a worse Easter song and I'm stuck. I'm certain there's worse out there (after all, people like the Black Eyed Peas so it stands to reason that such a dearth of taste would probably transfer over to the population of the redeemed), but nothing worse comes to mind.

"Were You There" is perfectly indicative of that contentless, sentimental pap that developed out of the 19th century church. The song says nothing as it rumbles and trudges along. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Nope, you? Nah, me neither. Huh. I guess it stands to reason. Were you there when they nailed him to a tree? Can't say that I was, you? No, I didn't think so. Was that a weird question? Were you there when they laid him in the ground? I'm only 33. Sometimes it causes me to tremble. That you weren't there? Tremble. Like you're mad? Or you just got the morning shivers? Tremble. Huh, alright. If you say so.

Ugh. Another reason why I prefer Halloween to Easter. No dumb songs. Well, except for the How to Spell Halloween song. But at least that one's kind of jaunty.

At Least I'm Still Smiling

We at Nowheresville, USA have a long and storied history of poking good-natured jabs at local churches who misuse their advertising dollar by sending out goofy flyers in the mail. Sometimes the problem is inappropriate stock photography that conveys a message slightly other than that which you would expect from a church. That isn't some kooky-but-way-fun cult. Other times, you have instances like today's, a church who probably used photos of real members (most of them don't look manicured enough to be stock art) but just couldn't get it together in editorial. The copy here reads: "What are these people smiling about?" The back side says "Because they are going to celebrate Easter at Mountain View Church!" Examine the flyer below and discover the disconnect between copy and visual.

Spectator Sports & Gardening vs. the Awesome Might that Is Power Chompsky

I've been reading more in Chomsky's Understanding Power. It's kinda cool because the way it's laid out, you can just flip around and read on whatever subject you want - since he's basically just taking random questions from a variety of audiences. So the other night, I ran across an interesting subject of which I completely agree with one facet of his discussion and pretty much disagree with the other facet. He's kinda like Leithart in that.

So he's talking about spectator sports. You can read the whole thing on the internet (it's only a page and a half), probably illegally. He's talking about the role of sports in de-politicizing people (which is a pretty dicey concept, if you ask me), but when he's talking about the nature of sports team support, I think he's right on the money.

I remember very well in high school having a sudden kind of Erlebnis, you know, a sudden insight, and asking myself, why do I care if my high school football team wins? I don't know anybody on the team. They don't know me. I wouldn't know what to say to them if I met them. Why do I care? Why do I get all excited if the football team wins and all downcast if it loses? Anti it's true, you do: you're taught from childhood that you've got to worry about the Philadelphia Phillies, where I was. In fact, there's apparently a psychological phenomenon of lack of self-confidence or something which affected boys of approximately my age who grew up in Philadelphia, because every sports team was always in last place, and it's kind of a blow to your ego when that happens, people are always lording it over you.

I spoke of this penchant we have for identifying ourselves with arbitrary communities way back when in discussing team support in the Olympics and it essentially boils down to Yay-This-Side-of-the-River and Boo-Your-Side-of-the-River. In 1963's Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut describes these imagined communities as granfalloons and says (through story device) "If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon."

Essentially, the truth is that there is no rational reason for me to root for one athletic club over another. Real Madrid vs. Barcelona? Who cares. Cards vs. Tigers? Who cares. Flyers vs. Sabers? Who cares. Well the thing is: people care and they care by the masses.

Chomsky's answer for why they care, though, is a bit off, I think.

In our society, we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way - so what they do is they put their minds into other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folk. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports-so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self-confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter.

Rather than point to what I think is probably a more readily intuitive answer - that people might actually really and honestly like either watching sports or the idea of competitiveness - Chomsky presumes that people are encouraged to devote themselves to something meaningless like sports fanaticism by the power structure in order to prevent them from mucking around in things that matter. I think this is what happens when one takes on a dogma. All things becomes filtered through dogma-coloured lenses. This is why for conspiracy theorists, everything becomes a conspiracy and for persecutionist Christians, every movement by the government or society is seen to be a particularly designed sleight to their way of life.

This is one of the things I'm observing in Understanding Power. Chomsky has a lot of interesting things to say and sometimes has a compelling view of the facts as he presents them (this topic deserves another post), but essentially, you know that no matter what he's talking about, he'll tie it into the US power structure and how it's all designed to keep power out of peoples hands. I'm awaiting pretty anxiously the part where he explains how the invention of Americanized pizza is evidence of power conspiracy.

Anyway, to be fair, I think there may be some people for whom sports fanaticism is an escape from a world out of control. But I think that to generalize that this is the case for the masses is inaccurate and a pretty big leap. It's a judgment of motive that really probably doesn't bear itself out under any real scrutiny. In support of the idea, I had a friend once who worked with troubled teens at a youth shelter sort of place. He would get home everyday from work completely drained. The job, as rewarding as it was, was also completely deflating. He recognized that the baby steps he was able to make with these truly disturbed and, indeed, broken kids were mere drops in the bucket. These were kids he could never fix. So, in order to not grow despondent himself, he would throw himself into gardening in the evenings and weekends. We had a large garden and we could watch it take shape as he took control over it. It was a relief for him to have control over something - for him to see the benefit of his actions.

Gardening, for him was a coping method. More on coping methods in a second.

Still, it would be inaccurate to say that everyone - or even most people - dive into gardening as a coping method. Some people, and there are a lot of them, really just love flora. Gardens can be especially fun for people who love plants but are trapped in areas where plants don't naturally find themselves in abundance. A friend of mine is leaving for Japan this week to view the cherry blossoms (something for which I may be eternally envious). It's not because his life is out of control. It's 'cause they're freakin' beautiful.

Myself. I know far more about comics and movies than the average citizen. I have poured a lot of my waking life into studying in these fields. I am not unlike the sports fanatic in my affection for comics and film. And you know what? Psychologically, there's little more to it than the fact that I enjoy those things. I really enjoy storytelling, but even more I enjoy the way stories can be told through these two media. It's not an act of escapism. I'm pretty grounded and disillusioned. And I'm content in that. I don't feel the need to reillusion myself. I don't specialize in this way because better things are unavailable to me.

As well, most sports fanaticism develops in childhood (the human era when many obsessions are developed). My brother, The Li'l Dane, developed into a sports statistician early in elementary school. And I think we can comfortably say that this didn't happen as a coping mechanism for him to deal with the fact that he held little political influence as a fourth grader.

And now that we've come back to coping mechanisms, a point I made a couple years ago is similar to Chomsky's but has, I think, a little more real world validity. Political interest itself is, for many, a coping mechanism.

Nobody is happy with the world around them. We live in a cursed world, so this lack of contentment with a world filled with death, disease, pain, and other people is expected. Simultaneously, people come to believe with conviction that the things they believe about government, its purpose, and where its goals ought to lie - they begin to believe that these opinions they hold are more than just correct - they are right. Now this conviction is not of its own a problem, but when combined with the lack of happiness in one's world, he comes to believe that the reason he is not happy is that the world is not run according to the way he believes it should be run.

I think that what Chomsky is doing, in many ways, is exactly that for which he chastises (indirectly) the sports fanatic. He feels powerless in the face of the world-machine that operates entirely without his say-so; and so he throws himself into something he feels he can keep a pretty good expert's grasp on: power conspiracy. The difference is that he chooses to label his fanatic's interest as worthwhile while the sports fanatic's interest is trifling. In the hierarchy of things, political interest and commentary is probably actually more important than sports commentary. But probably not by some overwhelming degree. It's probably up there with a fanatical interest in cooking or health food or the stock market.