Patchwork; or That Land of New Strangers, Internet
Patchwork, Sept. 21 through Oct. 4. Ben says the smile on my face in my icon pic says, “I’ll be nice…at first.”
Expect a couple longer stories soon. These were nothing to compared the time-eating monoliths that should be accessible soon.
2 years ago - read more...
Patch; or That Land of New Phrases, Internet
I write for new people: People who care about ideas and art. People who like books. People who think about the future and less about the past. People who strive to be more than pressmen.
Tell your friends. View these twice. The more foot traffic, the more likely we’ll stay around.
the following were posted between Sept. 14 through Sept. 20.
2 years ago - read more...
Leopards Break Into The Temple And Drink To The Dregs What Is In The Sacrificial Pitchers; or Greg And Gregg
I’ve uploaded a few photos for Greg: may they serve your curiosity, though I still have much to learn, oh sage of the digital framing.
First a few words on funeral and flesh.
It is a shame whenever the memory of a good person is besmirched, but it is a worse shame when it is exploited for the purpose of commerce.
No, I don’t have some scathing advertisement on the brain. (Although, if Biller Wilder’s face shows up on BMW commercial consider it time this cinephile took pitchfork and torch to the streets.) I attended the funeral service for the father of an old friend on Saturday at the United Church of Christ in Elmhurst. After friends, cousins and (in an unorthodox move) widow paid their verbal respect, the dead man’s business associates descended upon the altar as if there was meat dangling from the cross. One after another, they enticed the audience with anecdotes. Whoever cajoles last cajoles best, I thought. It seems doubtful any one of them would have elected to speak had the first carpetbagger not opened his mouth.
The podium is no stranger to ego and solipsism, but I felt my body tighten and hoped for the first time in my life that the pastor would interrupt them with scripture, any scripture. But to whom were they salespitching? I would eventually learn from my parents that it was a performance to capture the attention of the widow, who presumed control last week of her husband’s company.
I hope Richard Gregg was not in attendance, for he certainly would not have liked his own eulogy.
2 years ago - read more...
Myth And Mask; or The Faces Of Criminals
As a student of classical liberalism, I am the first to admit that I do not know, that veracity is based on science, and that there are limits to perception, knowledge and expertise. The trouble lay not with the dumb or the brilliant, but with those fanatics, boors and poseurs who preside somewhere in the middle: They’re not very good at what they do, but they tout it anyhow. They don’t know what they espouse, let alone listen to the it.
So it was with fortuitousness that I snapped the photographs below. The two Mexican farmers and brothers pictured had been fertilizing marijuana fields in a southsuburban Cook County forest preserve for weeks, according to authorities. They were still on their campground, under guard and gun, by the time the local media and I arrived Friday afternoon. Forest Preserve police let us mingle closely with these men and even pointed out the carcass of the fawn they had killed and consumed on tortillas the day before. Though the stench was less pungent than I imagined, it lingered in my nostrils for quite some time.
When the smaller one smiled at me, I couldn’t help but smile back.
These are not the faces of the cartel, of geopolitical drug lords. These are farmers, with families, who probably had little recourse. May these pawns be granted leniency in court—where they could potentially receive stiffer punishments than some murderers and rapists—because they tended to a crop that causes harm only when criminalized by the state.
Worth reading and revering: Too Many Laws and Thinking the Unthinkable
2 years ago - read more...
False Consciousness In Gurnee; or Irony And Cynicism
Having regained my senses, I can say with near-certainty and without evidence that today I visited Six Flags Great America for the last time. The rides served their escapist and simulated-death-seeking purpose (who doesn’t wonder what falling from 300 feet feels like without actually making it your last thought) but the sun was relentless. To complicate matters, my ability to think and feel was nearly annulled by rot-gut hangover.
At Johnny Rocket’s I forfeited $12 for a hamburger and fries “meal” that did not include a drink. Outside the Raging Bull ride, I watched others shell out $4 per drink, $6 per soft pretzel with imitation cheese. It was like being trapped inside Martha Stewart’s wet dream or some crooked gambling machine, coins coming in and without end from every direction.
Supply and demand. So are the fundamental, easily recognizable tenets of capitalism, and so are the economic tenets I cherish.
But this amusement park in Gurnee is only ostensibly capitalistic, and those who fail to see the difference that makes a difference fail to appreciate the capitalist system. There can be no demand at Six Flags save the demand created by Six Flags. Without competition (there are a few vendors who all sell the same four items), it is a skewed marketplace where the supplier is singular and He dictates the terms of transaction. In other words—you, the consumer, have no choice in the matter. You’ll pay $12 for a plate of bland meat and potatoes because you would rather not starve.
Economics aside, it was a good day, if only because I spent so much time with a dear and clever and beautiful individual. It was also enriched with a bit of earnest early morning reading. Around 10 a.m. I momentarily parted the cognitive clouds of confusion with the following passage. After deriding then President Clinton, Christopher Hitchens writes,
But irony and cynicism, as people have an interest in forgetting, are not mere mannerisms, or “coping skills” for dealing with the postmodern. They originate in hardwon and dearly bought experience.
Well said.
2 years ago - read more...
For Friends; or For Lovers
Long a puritanical symbol of rebirth and redemption, water has the ability to cleanse and dissolve. Though the symbolism is invariably different, rain provides the same service, washing and dissolving disparate items back amongst the earth. Nothing complicated about this observation.
But rain has the opposite effect on the mind, not deluding one’s memory but often strengthening it. A storm physically isolates individuals and can consequently embolden their experience together. Many a fond moment in my life has been bookmarked by the rain, and many an otherwise banal afternoon has been hydrated by the sound of pitter-patter from above.
I can easily recall the time in middle school when my mother purchased for me Motorhead’s 1916—a “meteoric mediocrity,” as Martin Amis once coined, in retrospect. I was disappointed to spend the day in doors but remember the next few hours in the living room pleasurably listening to the album through headphones. Through the window, the house looked like it was crying, though this inchoate chap was well content on the inside.
Prominent, in recent years, is the memory of the evening Ryan and I consumed an exorbitant amount of whiskey and drove a stone-sober Gary back home during a down pour. It was not hard, even in my stupor, to sense his uneasiness in the back as he gripped his seat. The string of Gary’s anxious sighs were interrupted only by the laughter of the two bastards upfront. All three of us laugh about it today.
And then there was the time, only a few weeks ago, when Katie and I indulged on some artery-combating food and then watched the magnificent A Single Man, a film, coincidentally, about recognizing the meaningful albeit temporal moments in life. The remaining details of this particular evening, however, will have to end here, as they are the sole and private property of the lovers concerned.
2 years ago - read more...
For Garret; or For Bardamu
It began in a sex club.
Or so was the joke today in the office, where I manage to mix labor with daydreaming, masochism with humor.
The lives of 300 million Americans was changed, for better or worse, when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. His climb to the White House could not have been made possible without his position as a U.S. Senator, which he easily won in 2004 against Alan Keyes.
Keyes took the nomination for the U.S. Senate only after Jack Ryan, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and local media-tycoon, withdrew his candidacy. Ryan won the Illinois Republican primary earlier that year, but must never have counted on the release of his divorce court testimony from five years earlier during his campaign. In them his wife, actress Jeri Ryan, alleged that Ryan insisted they elope in sex clubs in New York, New Orleans and Paris. Jeri Ryan described on one occasion “a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.” The disagreement reportedly broke the marriage, and Keyes proceeded to lose miserably a couple months later. (In an interview with his former alma mater’s newspaper, Ryan commented, “This is not a good precedent for American society if you really want the best and brightest to run.” The opaquely draped walking ego that is Jack Ryan has since opened a media company on the southwest side of Chicago.)
“Obama is president because Ryan couldn’t stay out of a sex club,” a voice injected, laughter sprouting throughout the newsroom.
The joke is more facetious, if crude, than veracious. Illinois public opinion polls—the ecstasy of a relativized world—showed Ryan trailing Obama by 22 percentage-points in late-spring. It is doubtful the “conservative idealist” would have caught up with the budding hope-monger. But it is an interesting idea to consider: how much of our personal lives have been altered and determined by the unfettered promiscuity of public officials?
2 years ago - read more...
The Trial; or Public Ventilation
Franz Kafka’s The Trial is a good book that could have made a great novella. I have resolved to use the word masterpiece sparingly, but this fantastic, nightmarishly comedic piece of absurdity could have been masterful were it not so goddamn long and tedious. However, without reading into the author or book’s reception or criticism whatsoever, I suspect that its tediousness was intentional. It would be careless of me to expect a book that satirizes the alienation and confusion of modern man with democratic law to be a lucid experience.
And it is masterful in its foresight. I had the unfortunate coincidence of reading this book during a recent brush with local, county and state political and bureaucratic incompetence. Allow me to explain.
There was an accident in the Calumet Sag Channel near the Ashland Bridge in Blue Island on Sunday. A man was thrown when two boats collided. His body was recovered from the botton of the channel several hours later.
Because the husband and father lived and worked in Orland Park, it was my responsibility to report his death in the Regional News. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources told me to contact the Coast Guard, who told me to contact the Illinois state police Master Sergeant in charge of media relations, who told me to contact some media relations person in Cook County, who told me to contact some Conservation office in Springfield, who told me to contact the Conservation office in Chicago, who told me to contact another media person in Cook County, who told me to contact the Blue Island Fire Department, who told me to contact the Palos Park Fire Department, who told me to contact the Palos Heights Fire Department, who told me to contact the Blue Island Fire Department.
Each department or institution had something to do with the rescue or investigation, and yet no one knew anything in particular. There is always the possibility that I was getting the run-around, i.e. they were parting the pestering reporter off on another agency. But I find it unlikely that everyone I spoke to was this intentionally callous.
Everyone and no one seemed to be in charge.
As Joseph K. discovered, there are levels to this type of alienated madness. The media public relations officer is the doorkeeper, who both reports what skewed information he is handed and whose job it is to protect the interests of the inner doorkeepers thereafter.
I cannot help but wonder after this dizzying experience whether the division of labor, which has been so crucial in the private sphere and our subsequent and exorbitantly high standard of living, is eroding the public sphere.
I pause to reflect on the ridiculousness of this last thought: was the public sphere every efficient?
‘I have no wish to shine as an orator,’ said K., having come to this conclusion, ‘nor could I if I wished…. All I desire is the public ventilation of a public grievance.’
2 years ago - read more...
Biblio-Wonder; or When Jesse Sat Down One Evening…
“Call me Ishmael.”
“Maman died today.”
“When Gregory Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
The opening sentence of any piece of writing is the inexorable source of heat from which all of its following light seeps. While a brilliant opening sentence does not necessarily make a brilliant book, it certainly helps.
If this presumptuous hypothesis is true, we must boldly countenance the follow-up question: Does a bad opening sentence help make a bad book?
I’ve been asking myself this question for days. I leave the question open, of course, for anyone who wishes to talk about it further. Without the Twilight series to browse through, however, I do not have a great deal of bad or specious literature (two very different types of books, for the record) at my disposal. Let us make due with what I have.
The opening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban reads:
“Harry potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.”
Not bad or particularly bland, but definitely flavorless.
For contrast, witness the opening to J.M. Barrie’s fantastic Peter Pan.
“All children, except one, grow up.”
While an opening sentence is generally indicative of the quality of the remaining book, it is by no means definite—for a bad book collectively can show signs of promise and creative craftsmanship particularly, just as a good book (or blog) collectively can wane and find its footing tumbling upward.
I have never exalted Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness like so many critics, but “The horror! The horror!” is among my favorite things to mutter after a long night of bottle-tipping. The best example that comes to my mind, in this moment, of a bad book with a great opening line is Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism.” How prescient, indeed.
Karl Marx, the writer, reminds me that we should not dismiss non-fiction writing as a non-creative exercise. Orwell, whose masterful essays have gone unappreciated and misunderstood except by a wise few, knew this well. In the opening of “Reflections on Gandhi,” he wrote: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.” To which we might construe: Sentences should be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, because the tests that apply to writers are not, of course, the same in all cases.
I conclude, and leave my audience the floor to spit and hiss with the usual empty accusations about elitism, with my favorite opening sentence. Fyodor Dostoevsky spoke to something in my irrational nature when in Notes from Underground he began (and Ralph Matlaw translated):
“I am a sick man.”
2 years ago - read more...
The Noise Auction; or The Droll Stroll
The most detestable of social gatherings is the noise auction, as I call it, where clods of every expression out-bid one another for the attention of the bar room. After a series of verbal somersaults, the contestants walk away with inflated chests and mixed bags of indulging and indignant glances. Like talking in a movie theater, it is, as Christopher Hitchens says, ”the height of antisocial behavior, because it ruins the pleasure of others while bringing no benefit to the offender.”
Last night I heard someone say, “I hate books. If I need something, I’ll find it online. That’s what the internet is for.”
I will never understand the fascination with ignorance, with antiknowledge, with retrieving information rather than learning it (at which point it becomes knowledge). His statement was, for the record, a non-sequitur. Had he visited the logic entry on Wikipedia he might understand where his thoughts failed to connect. But yet were he the type of person who visited the logic entry on Wikipedia, he would probably also be the type to read about logic in the sources of Wikipedia, i.e. books.
I told him his statement was the “stupidest thing I had ever heard.” When I left, the lily-liver called me “Lord of the Books,” a title I certainly do not deserve but one I would be honored to don.
At his next book burning, may he and his obscurant kinsmen suffocate on the ashes of Aldous Huxley.
The phrase “lily-liver,” for the record, has an interesting origin. According to the infallible internet, the liver connoted strength and courage to the people of medieval Europe. (Has this changed?) Lily, as we know empirically, is a pale-colored flower. Put the two together and you have cowardice.
It feels good to do a little writing of my choosing. I’ll see you fellow droll strollers soon.
2 years ago - read more...
Phillip Bell Named To OP Veterans’ Commission
From The Regional News, 6/17. You can find an accompanying photo here.
by Jesse Marx
staff reporter
The word stoic comes from the Greek stoa, which means portico — a covered walkway supported by columns that guided participants to a single destination.
Retired Army Sgt. First Class Phillip Bell describes his attitude in life as stoic.
Given the choice between finishing the last two months of his one-year tour of duty and going home early, Bell stayed in Iraq.
“Some people ask ‘why?’ and I look at it as, your biggest worry was whether you were gonna die. And if that happened, you weren’t gonna know about it any ways,” he said.
On March 28, 2006, less than a month after deciding to stay, Bell’s armored vehicle hit a roadside bomb outside the town of Fallujah.
“One individual died on site. My gunner, about two years ago, ended up losing his leg due to injuries he sustained. I ended up with a fractured back. One other guy that was in the vehicle with me was put into a medical coma,” he said.
The explosion lodged 40 pieces of shrapnel into Bell’s back — 20 of which remain today.
“Sometimes if you move too much the muscle and the shrapnel will actually feel like it’s cutting you from the inside out,” Bell said in the second person, as if he were describing the injury of a person other than himself. “It actually feels like you’re getting stabbed.”
Yet Bell was not inspired by stoicism to join the National Guard after September 11, 2001, and eventually volunteer for a position to help train and advise Iraqi military and police forces.
“I looked at it as an opportunity to help prepare them for the future, while reducing our role over there,” Bell explained.
“I really believed what I was doing out there was helping,” he added. “If I could, I would be back there again.”
At 34 years old, Bell is the youngest member of the Veterans’ Commission. Created by the Orland Park Village Board in 1993, the commission promotes awareness of veterans and their families by participating in holiday ceremonies and donating to local veterans’ hospitals and homeless shelters.
Mayor Dan McLaughlin appointed Bell to the village veterans panel on June 7.
McLaughlin is pleased to have appointed a young member with such an “outstanding record,” he said.
Bell sees his youth as an opportunity to attract “youngblood” and looks forward to speaking with high school history classes about America’s role in shaping a democratic Iraq.
“I believe for people to really know how something is going they need to hear it from somebody who was there, instead of reading it through history books, some of [which] is biased,” Bell said.
He credited Veterans’ Commission Recording Secretary Gail Blummer for helping him obtain injury disability information after his medical discharge on Jan. 1, 2008. He said he hopes to do the same for other returning soldiers.
Bell likened the supportive network of veterans’ organizations to a collective family. His own immediate family has an extensive military history: Tom, his father, served in Vietnam and Thaddeus, his grandfather, served in World War II.
Before enlistment, Bell worked as an electrician, but he could not return to the field on account of his injury.
“When I knew that the military wasn’t gonna keep me and I wasn’t gonna be an electrician, I think hopping right back into school at that time probably was the best thing to do because it didn’t leave oneself that free time to start depression,” he said.
Bell completed his associate’s degree from Moraine Valley Community College, where he helped start the club Vets for Vets, and is working on a bachelor’s degree in accounting at DePaul University. Bell admits that bookkeeping is a far remove from the battlefield, but said if he has to work indoors he might as well do something that he enjoys.
Accountants are currently making sense of the marketplace for the benefit of the American public, Bell said.
Like a dutiful citizen and soldier, he added, “They need you in good times and bad.”
Bell also joined the Orland Park Lions Club after his discharge, using events to collect donations for the Veterans’ Commission. He spends his time between school and fund-raisers playing with his dogs, Wrigley and Ivy.
The Commission admits ad hoc, or temporary, members, but it requires a mayoral appointment to become permanent. On Blummer’s advice, Bell wrote a letter to the mayor and waited a year.
“One day I opened up my mailbox,” he said, ”and there was a letter saying he accepted my application if I was still interested.”
He was.
“I was happy. I had been waiting for it — although I had put it in the back of my mind — because it is something I hold strong. I believe it is an honor to be recognized.”
2 years ago - read more...
A Week In The Life
It was, perhaps, the busiest week of my life, and therefore the thirstiest. The Regional News did not publish two additional stories of mine online.
Without language I might never get up in the morning. And without drink I might never fall asleep at night.
The Regional News 5/20:
Orland Rejects Solar, Wind Energy
The Reporter 5/20:
* I used the word “ambience” in this article when I shoul have used “ambiance.” The meanings of these two words are not as similar as certain dictionary websites would have you believe. Further, I’ve never been one to scorn a dictionary, but my 1968 Webster’s New World Dictionary has failed me in a similar manner. It was my father’s during his college years, and I use it for sentimental reasons, reminding me yet again that sentiment is always the first retreat of the boring, dependent mind.
3 years ago - read more...
