Meditation on the Possibility of Geometric Thought by Yonza the Barbarian

Sometimes my thoughts have edges
Some sharp, some dull, but nevertheless
The demarcation of an objects end
Where space can resume and can invite other objects.

Sometimes the edges are vivid
But sometimes they blur or coalesce or meld
Like two proximal beads of water
Pulling at one another with a tiny miraculous force
And stretching out like psuedopodia
And bursting into an ovoid for just a moment
Before emerging into existence as round, supra-massive bead

All thoughts have one dimension: time
But I think some of my thoughts have more dimensions
Because some of my thoughts are larger than others (spatially)
And they bully other thoughts
Push them from awareness
Invaginate them and assimilate them
Destroy them and table them and holster them

Some thoughts are
Of me
Some thoughts are somehow not
Of me

I generate them sometimes.
These are the thoughts that are Of Me.
But some thoughts intrude; anxieties, worries, etc.
These are not Of Me.

I try to pin my thoughts
Like a bug wriggling on the wall
But they always crawl out from under the pin
And recede and de-objectify and evanesce back
To unawareness.

But at least, sometimes
If I keep them pinned for a beat or two
And fix my gaze just long enough
I can get them on paper.
Trapped forever as verisimilitude

Some Tips On Taking the 6:18 New Haven Line From Grand Central to Larchmont by Yonza the Barbarian

The 6:18 New Haven Line train stopping at Mt. Vernon, Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Rye and Harrison will have all its seats taken by 6:15, so after 6:15 there is SRO. If you come before 6:15 and you are heading towards Larchmont, I have some helpful tips on maximizing your comfort for the ride home:

(1) Sit next to black people. Black people tend get off at Fordham or Mt. Vernon while white people tend to get off at Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Rye and Harrison. By sitting next to a black person, you maximize the chances that the seat next to you will be vacated early in the ride, thus allowing you more room to sprawl and reducing the chances of you falling asleep on the shoulder of the person in the adjacent seat, drooling on their neck, and being given an inconspicuous nudge awake, after which you spend about five seconds getting your bearings and then the humiliation sets in, and so you make sure to lean way towards the other direction when you rest your eyes but in doing so you just end up falling asleep on the shoulder of the guy sitting on that side, and so on and so forth.

(2) Sit next to women. The obvious: women tend to be more petite. Sitting next to a woman will give you more of a buffer zone, and thus more sprawling room. A less obvious benefit of sitting next to women is that they tend to have more respect for seat boundaries than men. When sitting next to a woman she will be sure to keep her body upright and will keep her coat, bag, and any other belonging neatly filed on her lap and is sure to tuck any over-spilling sleeves or cloth within the plane of the seat divisions. Men tend to have less respect for the seat divisions, and will often sprawl their legs as far as possible without making physical contact with your legs.

(3) Asses your tolerance for risk, and choose a bench accordingly. The 6:18 has two types of benches: three seaters, where there third seat is a half-backed-midget-seat, and two seaters. If you have your pick of either type of bench, first be sure not to pick the midget seat if you have another option. The midget seat might seem alright at first glance, but after you sit down and start getting sleepy and you see all the people around you leaning back in comfort, you become so desirous that you’ll often do a false head-lean, where, despite your better knowledge, you sort of lean your head back with a deluded expectation that there will be a cushion there to put your head and neck at ease, but of course the delusional hope is never realized and you get frustrated until your are completely consumed by the fact that your head has no place to rest, and all you can think about is your flimsy neck muscles propping up your head and all the effort you are putting in and how nice it all could have been if you just chose the seat with the back. Now: assuming you are wise enough not to choose the half-backed-midget-seat your next choice would be either window two-seater or window-three seater. I will not go into the advantages/disadvantages of choosing either (for the sake of brevity). Suffice it to say that either choice is rational, but the choice should be made according to risk tolerance.

(4) After you enter the vestibule, head towards the group of seats in the direction opposite to that which you were walking as you walked on the platform next to the train. By doing this, your path, from entering on to the platform in GCS all the way to your seat, should look like a cane; you are going straight down the platform and then Uing into your seat (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, you make a right into the train door, then once in the vestibule you make another right and sit down in those seats). The reason why you should do this is because people, for some reason, tend to continue walking into the train in the same direction they were walking on the platform (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, and you make a right into the vestibule, most people will turn left, thus heading in the same direction they were walking down the platform -- it looks like a cubing function). I’m not sure why people do this, but I suspect that it has something to do with a subconscious desire to continue on a similar a path as possible, like a psycho-kinetic version of momentum, I suppose. Anyway, by not falling for this psychokinetic blunder, you maximize your chances of having the seat next to you not taken, allowing you to sprawl.



(5) From my experience – this tip I’m a little less confident in than the rest – you want to go three-quarters of the way down the platform to find the car with the fewest people. The theory goes that some people are just lazy and so they take the first few cars, and some people think they will get the least-crowded car if they walk a little, so they walk about half way. But the people that figure they should walk three-quarters of the way are so hardcore that they figure they might as well go all the way, since surely nobody but them would be willing to walk that far down the platform, where –who knows! – there might be giant mutated rats, and breeds of cold war era dwarf-men that chose to hide in the GCS tunnel because of their apocalyptic predictions related to ICBMs and the like (and surely these are the people, who, when they existed in the supraterranean world, sat comfortably on the half-backed-midget-seats and all was right as rain), and so the brave souls can’t puss out at ¾ of the way. So then there is dearth of people who would go three quarters -- and only three quarters – of the way down the platform. Or so the theory goes.

Bon voyage.

Preliminary Thoughts on Media Archetypes and Personality Types Through Time by Yonza the Barbarian

To what degree to media archetypes create personality types?

Subsumed questions:

(1) To what degree do we (intentionally or unintentionally) model our personality after media archetypes?
(2) To what degree do other people interpret our personalities so as to conform their interpretations to media archetypes?

Related questions:

(1) Assuming we are more media saturated in the present than we were in the past, is it safe to say that that personality modeling based on media archetypes is more prevalent and/or more pronounced nowadays? Does this imply that the distinction between the media and reality – specifically, reality pertaining to personality types – disintegrates as time goes on?
(2) Are questions about media archetypes and their relation to personality types as they change through time something that can be answered, or do these questions fall prey to certain Heisenberg Microscope-type paradoxes? I ask this because, what comes to my mind, is the fact that trying to discover things about the past requires some medium (e.g. a history textbook) and such a medium -- being human artifice and therefore unnatural – becomes the very archetype-creating instrument that is our subject of study. It would be like scrutinizing a brand of microscope for flaws in the lens, through a microscope of that same brand.

Tangential questions:

(1) Assuming it is even possible to make sense of the notion of “personality,”


[“And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others” Montaigne, Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions]


what are its components and how can we measure it? Do we measure it in tradition of behaviorism? But then what is the difference between the Actor and the Genuine?
(2) Is it possible that emulation of media archetypes doesn’t recreate personality, but acts as a personality-superstructure on top of a nonmalleable foundation? If this is the case, what can we call this superstructure? We couldn’t call it acting, because it seems more genuine than acting.

A Critique of ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ by Yonza the Barbarian

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

There is a flaw in this joke. Let’s unpack it a bit to see why someone might mistakenly think it is funny.

Below I divide the joke into three events ordered chronologically.

(1) The joke teller (JT) asks a sincere question.
(2) The joke receiver (JR) hears the question, and thus develops a prima facie expectation that he will hear the answer to the question. Furthermore, JR develops an expectation – an expectation which is not semantically suggested by the question --- that the answer will provide him with some degree of knowledge that JR theretofore does not have. The prima facie expectation is expected because of the semantic structure of the question i.e. the “Why” implies that there is some answer that exists. The question, however, never explicitly calls for a knowledge-bestowing answer, but a knowledge-bestowing answer is expected due to general rules of conversation (that is, we expect that when we hear the answer to a question we gain information from the answer).
(3) The prima facie expectation is satisfied since the question was answered, but the conversational expectation of knowledge-bestowing is not satisfied since the joke itself, which premises the whole exchange on the fact that the chicken, in fact, did cross the road, already bestowed anything to be found in the answer in the question -- JR already knows that the chicken got to the other side by the time the answer is told; he knows from definitional deduction (i.e. “getting to the other side” is a concept that is contained in the set of the concepts in “chicken crosses the road”). This creates a “Well yea but that doesn’t tell me anything” cognitive milieu and it is this milieu that people consider humorous (even if you don’t laugh, there is still something that sort of clicks with an essence of humor when this milieu is induced).

Now that we see why the joke is [mistakenly] considered humorous, we can pinpoint the flaw; it is contained in step (3). One crucial part of step (3) is that we admit “getting to the other side” is a concept contained under “Chicken crosses the road.” The flaw is that the concept “getting to the other side” is not what the answer to the question is, the answer to the question is “ to get to the other side.” This first “to” that precedes “get” is crucial. To see the difference compare the two sentences

“The chicken that crossed the road got to the other side”

“The chicken crossed the road to get to other side”

The first sentence is more like what the joke should be, while the second sentence is what the joke is. The difference between these two sentences is that the first is purely scientific or descriptive, while the second sentence contains an alleged purposive action. The concept “chicken crosses the road” does contain “chicken gets to the other side” since a chicken that crossed the road must get to the other side because if it didn’t get to the other side then it would not have crossed the road. However, the chicken needn’t have had crossed the road “ [in order] to get to the other side.” In other words he needn’t have had crossed the road with the purpose of getting to the other side. For example, would you say that the pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to get to the other side? If you said “yes” you are wrong. They crossed to escape religious persecution; getting to the other side was incidental. To make the point clearer take the case of a surgeon: would you say that a surgeon performs surgery to stab someone’s body? Certainly not (I hope). The purpose is to cure someone of a sickness, and the stabbing is not only incidental but undesired (if docs could perform surgery without an incision they would).

The fact is, just because you did something doesn’t mean you did it purposively. So there is the flaw: since it is not necessarily the case that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side the answer actually does bestow knowledge on JR, and thus makes step (3) ineffectual. The piece of knowledge you gain is that the chicken crossed the road for the purpose of getting to the other side. So you might have the following exchange

JT: Why did the chicken cross the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: To get to the other side
JR: Interesting. You know, I would have thought that the reason the chicken crossed the road was to escape avian persecution, but ya’ live ya’ learn.

But there is a shining ray of hope in all this. The fact is the intended funniness of the joke could still be constructed simply by altering a few words. The following is the edited, perfected, minted version of the classic quip:

JT: What happened when the chicken crossed the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: It got to the other side
JR: Oh, you jokster!

Unedited Rant from 4/25/2008

The blank page. The bespactled realization of thinknot, of thinklessness, of self-referential immobility, stuck in a self-aggrandizing spiral of writing about not writing, which is the most boring writing of all, the sad back-up default postermodern (and postmortem, for all I care) fallback for the stupid, frustrated and enraged colleagues, dilettantes, amateurs, professionals and dogs; a fallback for morons and geniuses but a sad excuse for the purity of creativity, the real explosion of unfiltered open doorways and real progressive states of intelligence not surpassed by pathetic desperation. How do I askew my platitudinous fallback into the self-reference, the poor meta and onco-metastizing future to which I’m doomed.

I want to write about something funny, something sarcastic. But the trick is it has to be evident right there in the words – I can’t whip the end of my sentence with the over-credulous alto, no sign or punctuation for the fledgling chirp of sarcasm. How do I accomplish this? I can just tell the reader. The following is sarcastic: old people are the sweetest people of all. Or would that sentence stand on its own because of its saccharine little qualifier and mawkish content. It is far from true of course: there is no aging gracefully. Old people are not sweet but some of the ugliest and mentally disturbed (and disturbing) creatures on gods fucked-up blue sphere. I went to shadow a doctor a week ago and got to see a nice span of white demented people. In comes the old lady and the doctor bangs her (knee) and she has a reflex and everything. She puts out her had. She has arthritis, rheumatoid and the other kind – whatever that is. Her pointer finger kinks at the end like a sling-shot twig where one of the bifurcated legs is removed so it is one misaligned stick. I just want to jump up and grab that gnarled phalange and crack it back into place. The woman is demented too. What year is it? Um… 2000 she says. Some people can’t take gore. I can. But what I find most disgusting of all is witnessing the out-of-touch blathering of a demented.

The old judge comes in wearing a tweed jacket stinking of a classical conservatism and telling jokes about it: “Well my friend says, when he talks about Ann Arbor, he calls it ‘The People’s Republic of Ann Arbor’ because it is so left wing.” The doctor and I get out the wood boards and hammers and nails and various other appliances and begrudgingly build a little smile so his joke doesn’t go straight down and plunk through the linoleum floor into the neurology clinic directly below us and kill any of the half-dead geriatrics that don’t know who they are. The man is a judge and they demoted him out of the courtroom to just review cases. Why? Because they noticed his memory wasn’t what it used to be. Tap-tap on the patella, walk, push forward and back, follow your eyes with my fingers, what is the date? Remember these three objects: red, soccer, California, count back from 7 starting from 100, draw the pentagon, write a sentence, read this and do what it says – mini-mental complete. He is not demented (>23 on the mini-mental) but he ain’t fit for seeing cases.

Yesterday went to the doctor for sleep disorders. Old red-necked man, burned hard by the sun. Big arms. Midwestern—football build. He was having a dream that some intruder was standing over him and he’d sit-up mumbling or saying “I’m gonna get you” and thrash around like a maniac often smacking his wife. Diagnosis: parasomnia, an REM sleep disorder. He cites the fact that his neighbor, with whom he’d had a dispute, opened up machine gun fire on his house. But that’s not why he was having the bad dreams.

Pertaining to a Dream, by Danny Boy

Has it ever happened that when you looked into a mirror you simply were not you? Not as if you were cloaked in costume - disguised - or otherwise unable to recognize yourself for seeming older, younger, disfigured or abstractly recombined, but as if somewhere in the space between yourself and your reflected image you became disassociated and aware of a dissonance. The person staring back at you does not reproduce your movements like a twin copycat. His movements do not knowingly match your own. Instead, they are sickeningly changeling-esque. The expressions you feel the muscles in your face make are not reflected in the portal; your excitement does not register properly, your smile is perverted. You are either masked or unmasked, but which is impossible to tell.

Our Time, by Danny Boy

You may call the title of this post cheesy and I agree with you, it is. Or you may choose to label it corny, and by golly, I concur. But don't you dare call it cheesecorny, because, well, frankly that just sounds downright nasty. Like something you get at a carnival tent from an impish vendor whose presenting hand is disconcertingly small and discolored.

But you'll have to excuse the sloppy sentimentalism because the truth is that I'm finally genuinely excited about something. As President-Elect Obama (actually that sounds like total shit - let's just agree to call him President Obama from now on) trumpeted last night, his election represents the triumph of hope over fear, of democracy over tyranny, the coming of change instead of the faltering of grinding gears.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As the old adage goes, Easier Said Than Done, and President Obama is and always will be a marvelous speaker whose sonorous and oh-so-pleasing-to-the-ear oration can transport many, but can also at times carry little in the way of substance. He has talked the presidential talk, and now he must walk the presidential walk. And while I have no doubt that the Obama administration will be an instant and remarkable improvement on The-Administration-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, the political pragmatist (read as: pessimist) within demands that I consider the challenge of surmounting such extraordinary hype. Indeed, only so much is possible. In his own words, we are confronted with "two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century," and that's merely naming the obvious. As I said before, I have no doubts about his sense, strength, or skill, but (and I apologize if this bursts anyone's bubble; the last thing I want to be is a bubbleburster) in all probability, Barack Obama is no seraph divinely sent from beside the lord's celestial throne to restore American values and standing, although that is the Herculean task with which we've charged him.

This all being said, I told you that I was excited, and so far, admittedly, my tone has been rather grounded. Allow me to continue and it is my hope that you will follow the direction I'm headed.

I've voted in the only two elections for which I've been eligible. By most people's definition, and indeed according to my own (please indulge me, or else I'll be inclined to punch off your nose), I am a young man. As such, I am a member of the generation that is poised to take over, to assume the hefty and Atlas-like responsibility of holding up the world. For better or worse, each generation inherits the mantle, and each relies not only on its own unique creativity and talents, but on the experiences and history from which said creativity and talents are derived, to carry the weight.

In the nascent and crucial stages of our own worldly awareness and reckoning, we've forcibly grown accustomed to an abominable aberration. They may be the current status quo, but I contend that The Bush Years are not the norm, much as they may seem to us. Simply by the accident or providence of timing, our views and thoughts have been sculpted by the frustrating and stifling environment in which our consciences developed. There are many of us, I believe (myself included), browsing for an excuse for our indolence and apathy, and I think we need look no further. Our generation, the I-generation, as I would call it (for what may perhaps be obvious reasons, but I will save that lecture for another time), has often, it seemed to me, been characterized by the unique jadedness and insouciance that are the product of an age of instantaneous information and shameful, alienating politics.

But with the election of President Obama and the dissemination of his message (even if it be somewhat trite or a bit contrived) I, for one, believe I've experienced a moment of awakening. It was one of those internally exciting moments - like the first sprout of hair on your chin or being confused for your father on the phone - when you realize that you are on the inexorable path to manhood. Just as those constitute signs, I believe this was the summoning. And while the "Yes We Can" cliche would be off the charts in Disney Points were such a thing to exist, President Obama has authentically galvanized us, and his moment is ours.

It would take a cynic (and one with a predilection for breaking hearts, at that) to suggest the possibility that last night might have been the high point of the President Obama era. That after so much time spent campaigning and so much money and hope raised, the Obama movement has reached its apex and will abide by the Newtownian, tried-and-true rule - what goes up, must come down. That President Obama will merely be ordinary. That despite all his talent and promise, he will ultimately disappoint. And if we chose him, and he represents us, what does that suggest about us? Was our hope misplaced? Will we disappoint as well?

Personally, I don't believe such cynicism. But even if it were true, if it were the case that last night's coronation will be our most glorious moment for the next 4 or 8 years, if all that Barack Obama has accomplished has been to spark a glimmering flare of possibility and shepherd in a new generation - our generation - isn't that more than enough? The fulfillment of his promise - the prospect of change - is up to us, just like it always has been.

Koan: McCain Might be More Honest than People Think By Yonza the Barbarian

Last nights debate. Tom asked (reading from an e-mail by some chick from someplace I don’t know that must have been pretty damn excited (the chick, that is) that her question was actually getting on the air (I would be) but if she had any sense should also have known that the question was just asking (sorry, that’s a confusing use of that metaphor/personification) to be beat around (as in the bush) and obviously did get beat around (still as in the bush) by both Ob and Mc but ignoring the baseline phoniness I think Obama beat around (not as in the bush…. more as in a punching bag) poor old Mc) what the candidates don’t know and how they will learn it. Within McCain’s response was a single sentence that has not received enough attention in the media: “What I don’t know is the unexpected.” Hmmm…a zen-like answer for – as described by Tom Himself – a zen-like question.

How clever. Not only did McCain manage to directly answer the question (at least the first part), but his answer was unequivocally honest. Not knowing the unexpected! Brilliant! In fact, he was being so honest with that sentence that there is a name for sentences that true: tautologies. That means it is true necessarily or true by definition. Some other great tautologies are: “I am here,” and “I choose between options.” Interestingly enough, a tautological sentence is completely uninteresting (the word “uninteresting” here can be interpreted in both the typical sense (e.g. the show on C-SPAN was so uninteresting ) or defined more rigorously as non-ampliative, which basically means not transmitting any new information to the world/anyone) which is great because so is most poli-speak.

Here is why McCain’s statement is a tautology: you cannot know the unexpected; if you say “I know the unexpected” then the unexpected, definitionally speaking, is the expected (since you know it). Saying “I know the unexpected” is what we in The Business call a contradiction. A contradiction is the opposite of a tautology. It is when something is necessarily or definitionally false. Good thing McCain never used a contradiction…

So despite our partisan bickering and polarized contempt; despite our differences, disagreements, and irreconcilable beliefs; despite varying needs and wants and goals and lifestyles; despite fundamental chasms in our philosophies and motivations, there might be a shining ray of hope, something that can bridge partisanship, can overcome our differences, can unify or ideals, it is that we can all agree, republican or democrat black or white young or old, that McCain does not know the unexpected.

Meditations on Pain (I Think up This Crap (no surprise) at Work) by Yonza the Barbarian

People who complain more – are they more sensitive to pain than people who complain less? Are they just loud mouths? How can we make sense of being “sensitive to pain?” When we say we are “sensitive to X,” we usually fill in the variable X with an object. For example, we can say our eyes are sensitive to the sun. The sun is an object. Pain is not an object; pain is a sensation itself. So how could we be sensitive, or hypersensitive to the sense of something? Perhaps in these sorts of cases what people mean by pain is actually “pain stimulus.” This makes sense because a pain stimulus would be an object. For example, a thorn could be a pain stimulus and a thorn is an object. Then by saying “hypersensitive to pain” one might mean something like: “If some pain stimulus – a thorn for example – were to come into contact with your body there would be a higher frequency and/or magnitude of APs generated in your nociceptors.”


But is it also possible that two people can have the same frequency and/or magnitude of APs generated in their nociceptors and still one complains more than the other? The answer is a resounding “Yes.” So then we’re back to square one.


Some people are born w/o the ability to feel pain. This disorder is called congenital analgia.. The life of a congenital analgiac is characterized by frequent bone fractures, a biting off of one’s tongue, and young death. Is it fair to say people “suffer” from this disorder? Isn’t pain a key component of suffering? But maybe suffering only implies psychic pain? But isn’t psychic pain still pain? And isn’t all pain really psychic? After all, pain isn’t in the pain stimulus for the APs of the nociceptors; pain is in the mind. Then really psychic and non-psychic pain are the same thing just with different primary causes.


Something a little more interesting: some people acquire the disorder pain asymbolia (usually from a brain lesion) where the sufferer can still feel pain, but the pain doesn’t hurt. The pain has no hedonic negativity. Note: these people still describe the sensation as pain (remember this disorder is acquired not congenital, so the people that have it do know what pain is). This has heavy implications on the nature of language: our definitions tell us that part of being “pain” is hurting, but then if we can discover a posteriori that in fact pain is not essentially bound to hurting, then perhaps words are not so much defined as they are discovered. If the meaning of a word is to be discovered then words are separate from our creation of them, and so they are separate from us and exist in the universe independently of us. Such implications are reminiscent of Plato’s forms.


But questions about hurting can become thornier. Masochists enjoy pain. Does this imply that, like pain asymbolics, masochists do not feel the hedonic negativity of pain and in fact feel hedonic positivity of pain? But it seems that masochists partly get pleasure out of the hurting of the pain. In this case a masochist does not not feel pain, and does not not feel hurting (i.e. the negativity of pain), but in fact does not feel the negativity of hurt, for which there is no word. We can see then the relationship between pain, hurt, and negativity of hurt as they can be analogized to higher deritives of distance.

Pain:Hurt:Hedonic Negativity of Hurt (for which there is no name)

Congenital analgia:pain asymbolia:masochism

Distance:speed:acceleration

First derivitve : second derivative : third derivative

I Should Moderate the Upcoming Prez Debate and Get Paid Lots of Money B/c I'd Have Better Questions Than Anyone By Yonza the B.

Did everyone see the Palin/Biden debate!? Who do you think won? Palin held her own did she not? And that Biden, he’s made of the same stuff presidents are made of, don’t ya think? As for what I think, well, I don’t give a shit. I think it sucked. It was trite, boring, rehearsed, platitudinous, oblique, uninformative, pointless, and basically a waste of time that I could have otherwise spent making funny faces in my mirror.

So what I’m getting at in my I’m-to-cool-for-politics (but not too-cool-for-making-funny-faces-in-my-mirror) sort of way is that there is a big a problem somewhere because the presidential debates are overwhelmingly unhelpful[1]. Now I don’t know if everyone agrees with me, so I’ll make an argument and you can take it or leave it I guess (but I’m right, so you’d be better off taking it), and my argument consists of two major conjectures: (1) The debates are unhelpful, and (2) the problem is the questions the candidates are asked.

Now let’s not kid ourselves into thinking any candidate is or has ever been more than a politician; it is both the fact-of-the-matter and the necessary condition, and no matter how swept away by a candidate you are, how new or groundbreaking their strategies might be, there are just some facts of the world, you might even call them “laws,” that cannot be transgressed, and one of them is that in a democracy you are elected into office, and to be elected you must please more people than any real person could please. And so as a politician (and this increases in importance the higher the office) you must also be an actor. You must act away your flaws and uncertainties[2] and you must rehearse A LOT. You have speechwriters (i.e. scriptwriters) who try to write you lines for all possible contingencies. And they don’t try to write informative lines necessarily, but lines that offend the fewest, lines that are quotable and lines that are deleteriously accessible (meaning that by making something more accessible you trade accuracy and full-pictureness). Where else but in politics do you hear people try and characterize themselves so much? Imagine having a friend who wouldn’t shut up about what a maverick he was; you’d think he was an idiot and you definitely wouldn’t think he was a maverick. That’s why politics is more like a movie than some sort of massive social relationship: politicians create a character for themselves and impose it on the public, whereas in true social relationships it is the public who characterizes the person in question (or at least there is more of an interplay).

Now this essay is not intended to be a criticism of politics; it is a criticism of the media. So this previous paragraph, as much as it might have seemed like a jeremiad, was (or I intended it to be, at any rate) actually just a canvassing of the less inspiring side of the hard-facts of our political system. And it is important because these hard facts, rather than being a thing to complain about, should be a thing to surpass; so the responsibility lies on us or the media. The fact is that, assuming much of what politicians do campaigning is rehearsed, it should be a major goal to cut to the core or sift through the acting. After all, what these politicians do in office, that isn’t acting. That is where the shit stops. There the decisions are real. There a decision isn’t good if it is made with a smile; it is good if the resultant outcome is good. So really we should be striving to find out what the politicians would do when it matters.

But this is no easy task. These guys are good. When you talk about the executive branch, you’re talking about some of the best rehearsed people in the world. Passivity is not going to cut it here. So let’s talk debates because a prez/vp debate is, in theory, the forum most conducive to extemporaneity. Allow me to assert the following as a premise: the prez/vp debates, as we have seen so far, have consisted almost entirely of the aforementioned “acting.[3]” And who can blame the candidates? The line they have to walk is very fine, and if they have the opportunity to prepare and if that makes it easier for them to walk that line, well then why not? But listening to these rehearsed answers and talking points is not helpful to the American people, especially in this day in age.

Why is it not helpful? Well for one thing, all the rehearsed lines are not original and so probably appear in multiple media. These are lines about specific policies and philosophies of the candidates. “Change” “Drill baby drill” etc.. The point is, we’ve all seen it on television a hundred times or read it in the paper. Not only that, but the candidates take on various issues are now very accessible thanks to the WWW. It is not helpful to hear candidates say the same thing they’ve been saying over and over again. How does that help us learn more about the candidate and how does it really help us learn how qualified someone is to be prez/vp? After all, things like economics, social issues like abortion, health care, etc. etc… I might be mistaken but isn’t most of that stuff more like legislative branchy? Yes the president has veto power, and they do appoint SCJs, but in reality many of the decisions the president makes (and these decisions, unlike passing various laws, fall squarely on the shoulders of the president) are more leadership-type decisions (e.g. what to do immediately after a plane smashes into a big building). My beef is that these abilities – which seem very relevant to the presidency – never, or rarely, are brought up or drawn out from the candidate before he enters office.

But how do we draw it out? What we should do is ask better questions at the presidential debates. Ask questions not about the policies; ask what presidents would do in novel, high-pressure situations. By doing this we can cut through the acting; we can get to the core of the matter; we can find out if the candidates have what it takes, if they can think on their feet, if they can make important decisions quickly and wisely even if they are not prepared for them. As it stands now, the candidates prepare for everything they are going to say, but one of the skills most important to be president is to deal with stuff you’re not prepared for; to deal with stuff that has not cleanly been divided into left and right yet, or stuff that cuts across party lines. We know how these guys stand on this issue or that, but how will they be able to deal? I feel like that is such a crucial question, and more than that it is something that the debates can reveal. But they (teh debates) don’t! They don’t reveal shit. And why? Because of the dumb questions the candidates are asked. I feel like the candidates, before the debate, slip the moderators a twenty and say, “go easy on me,” because that is exactly what is being done. The moderators are going easy on them. You know what, if these people are going to be president they have to deal with some hard shit. Really hard. Stuff I would never want to deal with.[4] We shouldn’t go easy on them or give them a break because the world won’t.

So the questions that I suggest we ask are hypothetical-situation type questions. Stuff like: “if there is a nuclear bomb detonated in the US what are the first three things you would do?” Presumably the candidates do not have prepared answers to these types of questions. They can’t; there are too many of them. And so to answer these questions the candidates need to exercise their on the fly judgment – something that I think would be good for the public to see. Also, these type of questions can be unrelated to any relevant policy, and so the candidates would not be able to give one of those tangential non-answers. I mean imagine if someone had asked something like this to W. before he entered office: “If terrorists unleash a huge attack on the USA what is the first thing you do.” Now if in answering this question he sat there dumbfounded, scratching his head for 7 minutes because nobody had prepared him, then maybe people would have been a little wiser in choosing a leader because they would be more informed about his abilities.

So why aren’t the candidates asked these sorts of questions? Well, I suppose many people think that the issues and policies are just overwhelmingly important. But, again, passing laws is only loosely related to the executive branch, and so the candidates take on the issues does not reveal if someone has what it takes to be p/vp. Another reason these questions aren’t asked might be because, despite repetition, some people might not have a chance to hear the candidates defend their views except for the debates. Well…maybe. It seems a little strange that people would use the debates as their sole source of information on the candidate’s views. But because that might be the case I’ll say this: the debate should be a mix of hypothetical-type and issue-type questions and that way people can be informed about the whole package.

I will leave off with three questions that get my point across. I haven’t taken the time to think too long[5] and hard about these, so let me say there are certainly better/smarter/more revealing questions out there. It might be good if the people who wrote the questions were former presidential advisors, so they know what kind of impromptu decision making goes on in the White House on a day to day basis. So take these as sort of boiler-plate hypotheticals. These are the types of questions that should be asked (not the quality of):

(1) Suppose intelligence came in that a small terrorist group got a hold of a nuclear bomb, but the reports are unclear on how where or when. What actions would you take? Be specific.
(2) An all-out war breaks out between India and Pakistan. What responsibilities does the United States have and what actions do we take?
(3) Scientists discover that global warming is occurring at a rate faster than expected. It is widely acknowledged that if nothing is done the US will be under water w/in twenty years. How do you deal with this?

[1] Let me make it clear why “unhelpful” is the crucial adjective here. The purpose of these debates, as I think would be universally acknowledged, is to help people decide on who is most fit to be president. If this is the major purpose of the debates, it follows that being “unhelpful” would be the worst thing a debate could be. Now granted, people may watch it to support a candidate, to hurl invectives at their TV, or even a twisted few to be entertained, but these must be ancillary purposes otherwise the debate breaks down into nothing more than a macrocosmic episode of Survivor.
[2] Some people might subsume “uncertainty” under “flaws” but I think that is bogus. It pains me that, in the bizarre world of politics, uncertainty has become such a pejorative. The reason why is clearly because it is conflated with abulia, when there is no necessary connection between the two. There is a correlation, perhaps, but w/o a necessary connection why can’t we separate and isolate the two conditions, and find an answer to the real important thing: can a politician make a wise decision about issue X when he needs to, even though he is openly uncertain of the consequences?
[3] I’m asserting this as a premise because developing an argument for it would be nearly impossible. When you’re talking about nuanced behavior that suggests “acting” vs. genuineness, we’re talking about a sense or intuition more than anything concrete. Sure we can cite the fact that they are “stiff” or “mechanical” but in truth these adjectives are not only debatable themselves (e.g. I say candidate X is stiff, you say he’s not – then we’ve reached an impasse) but are relatively ineffectual argument-wise since they can be explained by many other things (e.g. nervousness, personality, having been on the trail too long). In truth our sense of genuineness is gestalt. So until the glorious day when EEGs are strapped to candidates heads at the debates, we will have to just defend premises like the one in question citing our intuitions. And if you disagree with me, then, well…there’s nothing I can do.
[4] If for some bizarre reason I ever do decide to become president, make it known here that I don’t really mean what I just said. (That is a not very funny joke).
[5] Blogging leads to lazy writing.

The Jordan Complex, by Danny Boy

As sure as I am of the identity of my biological father (that is, pretty sure - the other day a girl told me I looked like a boy who had gone missing at her college, never to turn up again), I am equally confident that I can establish the identity(/-ies) of my spiritual father(s). And just as my biological father (if, after all, he is who he claims to be [and I do not suffer a form of selective amnesia]) has endowed me with genetic, practical, and financial nourishment, my spiritual fathers have guided my dreams and kindled a spiritual incandescence within me, glowing whitehot in the ill-lit caverns of my consciousness.

Michael Jordan is one such spiritual sire, perhaps even the earliest one chronologically. It was impossibly clear to me - from a very early age - that just as I was my father's heir apparent, I was Jordan's air apparent. I am aware that it is not the conviction of many slightly-above-average-height Jewish boys from Suburbia, U.S.A. that they will one day succeed the greatest player in the history of basketball (or is it?), but what can I say? I was a brash little boy, and for several ambitious years during elementary school, it seemed to me that I was on track to supplant His Airness.

Jordan was - to put it simply - the most breathtaking athlete I had, and still have, ever seen. His physical abilities were simply transcendent, even in a league that boasted some of the world's greatest athletes and at a time when the league's talent was particularly concentrated. He was blessed with skills and capabilities at which his peers marveled and the rest of us could only watch, awestruck, as he displayed - in person and on television - abstract qualities us common-folk normally associate with the gods. Jordan was, as David Foster Wallace so eloquently and skillfully describes a great athlete, "profundity in motion."

But beyond his on-court guts and grace (please excuse the graininess of the footage, but as a longtime Jordan fanatic - one who has seen reams upon reams of highlight clips - this compilation contains some of the most jaw-dropping, eyebrow-raising, sit-back-and-rewind gems I've ever seen. Not to mention a great Indio-techno beat) and his indefatigable work ethic off it, Michael Jordan was outstanding for his sheer will to win, and this - more so than any of his aerodynamic basketball gymnastics, was what truly inspired me, what made me really want to Be Like Mike.

Not only did he garner all the significant individual hardware the NBA had to offer, but he won. Not always though; it took Jordan seven agonizing seasons to reach the climactic realm of being a champion, a painfully lengthy odyssey for a man who lustily thirsted for, needed to win, as a dehydrated desert wanderer needs water. Jordan was singularly compelled and borderline prurient about satisfying his hunger. And once he reached the summit, he refused to relinquish even an inch of that precious and hallowed ground.

Perhaps I can attribute it to my then-boyish naivete or the youthful male tendency for hero-worship that I drew my immature conclusion from Jordan's body of work, his career. That conclusion was this: resolute perfectionism. There had to be a secret, I surmised, to his success. How could this man be so dominant, so conquering? I deduced that it must have been his lionhearted will that enabled him to do the things he did - make the off-balance and in-the-air and buzzer-beating shots that he did. That his confidence in himself was so great that it overwhelmed any doubt. That the only route to such success was by a rigid standard of perfection and overflowing confidence. Few things, after all, are more repellent in a young man than a dearth of self-confidence. My conclusion was not wrong or improperly drawn so much as it was unhelpful.

"Why would I worry about missing a shot I hadn't taken yet?" This was Michael Jordan's response to a question about his mentality after nailing the buzzer-beater in Game 6 of the '98 NBA Finals that reined in another championship season, and (or so I thought) spread the fairy tale icing over the cake of his career. It sounds arrogant, perhaps, or almost inane and frustratingly simple in its reasoning. But Jordan's Zen-ish response actually reveals what is so terribly essential about Michael Jordan and other athletic geniuses.

After so many years, here finally I received the lesson I was meant to learn from Michael Jordan. Like so many other mere mortals, I have suffered from pangs of doubt in important moments. Indeed, at times of great importance it sometimes seems damned impossible to not consider the consequences of a negative outcome. I had fought this in either of two ways: 1) bravely talking myself into confidence (sometimes) or 2) avoiding or bailing on an uncertain situation, like a coward (more often).

It wasn't that Jordan had allowed his confidence to triumph eternally over his doubt - to swallow it whole like that Great White devouring a seal on Planet Earth - it was that he hadn't even thought to think about doubting himself. Yes, it was his ardent will that had fueled the hours of practice and passion for competition and delivered him to the moment, but in that moment - the moment that Jordan lived for - he could free himself from doubt or confidence or even thought. He simply waited for the moment, and then did what came naturally.

Returning to DFW, he articulates in his essay "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" (an inspiration for this piece) precisely what Jordan's comment suggests; that in this moment - when the typical person, you or I, could crumble under the crushing weight of doubt and/or fear of negative consequence - these athletic geniuses (surely they are geniuses) can simply think nothing at all. For DFW, this "thinking nothing" business helps to explain the dichotomy of the great athlete - that one can be transcendent and godly on the court or field but inarticulate and laconic when a thousand microphones and cameras are shoved at one's face. I am neither insightful (or old) enough to have made this observation originally, nor bold enough to plagiarize it as my own. For me, though, despite my new insight into Michael Jordan, I'm still left wanting. Are our attitudes so fundamentally different that the difference begins at the root? Were we born this way - with this capacity for thinking or non-thinking - or was it acquired developmentally? Is there any way I can reconcile the differences of his spirit with mine?

The First Barbarian Part VI: The Time of the Barbarian by Yonza the Barbarian

The Vice Roy ordered his cadre to secure the Barbarians and bring them to the house of the main Roy, Roy the Immortal. Barba son of Ryan made a last-ditch effort to defend himself and the quartet, but he was still pretty wasted from the night before and he just ended up making an ass of himself by trying to take a punch at one of the Vice Roy’s men and totally missing and letting out a little fart as he contracted his obliques for the punch, and then he just said “fuck it” and dozed off.

The first clear memory any of the Barbarians have of that whole debacle is being dropped in front of the throne of Roy the Immortal. They all tried to listen, but Dipsi the Maniac was having trouble because he desperately had to take a beer shit, but they wouldn’t let him. Douche bags. Roy the Immortal spoke: “Didn’t Vice Roy tell you never to return to Lazation? Have you no sense of honor, or propriety or civility? Have you no matters, or temperance, or self-restraint? What have you done to the modest city of Lazation? Neaderthals and women, women and men, men and mandrills are copulating in the streets, they are drunk and bloated, and all the barber shops are going out of business because the “hairy look” is the new vogue. What should I do with you five, bringers of anarchy, disrupters of the order.” Dipsi the Maniac totally shit his pants. Roy the Immortal snapped his finger and the quartet was dragged out of the room. “I wanted to speak to you alone,” Roy the Immortal spoke smugly, “Do you know who I am, Barba son of Ryan?” Barba looked at Roy with disdain, and let out a little hiccup. “Did your father ever tell you about his father, your grandpappy?”

“I never spoke to my father. He died in a camel accident when I was young. The only time I’ve ever had an exchange with him was when he was a demi-god and he inhabited the body of Kemba the Lion.”

“Well that’s too bad. Your grandpappy was a great man. He was a leader of men. A man with vision and propriety. I helped him lead, did you not know that? I was his viceroy. It was the time before the war with the separatists, when the city of Kavil, named for your grandpappy, was one with the city of Lazation: it was Kavil-Lazation. Your grandpappy assigned me rule over the western frontier, now Lazation proper. He exercised his rule in the East, the area which now holds the Ruins of Kavil. For many years his rule was great. He stuck to the codes passed down from the four titans of Kavil-Lazation: Nispair the Titan, Bigol the Titan, DeKup the Titan and Sookan the Titan.

"But weakness set in. Kavil the Immortal started talking of reforms; talk of allowing improper acts of gluttony and mandrill-sex. The people of the East took interest in his ideas and they praised him for it. I saw it for what it was: not reform but weakness. I saw that he was doing dishonor to Kavil-Lazation and to his immortal status. I knew I had the vision that he had so impetuously left behind. And, dear Barba son of Ryan, I was his brother and was thus next in line for his position. So I did it, during the plague of Lotus of 100,026 BC, when Kavil the Immortal was busy dealing with various issues. It is not easy to kill an immortal. You must use the tooth of a saber-tooth tiger and stick it in the immortal’s navel. Then you must reach inside his stomach and get the Talisman of Immortality out of his duodenum. In the midst of a cloud of locusts your grandpappy fell by my hand. I took the Talisman out of the duodenum and swallowed it, thus securing my status as immortal. Later, when the Eastern provinces began accusing me of regicide and rumors of rebellion circulated, I preemptively attacked and battle broke—it was the Kavil War. As you must know, the Eastern provinces were crushed and left in ruins. Your father, Ryan son of Kavil, was just a child at the time. I let him live, and gave him to a peasant family to raise, hoping he would never learn of his past and so would never be able to take vengeance upon me for killing his father. Unfortunately, your father seemed to have the spirit of reform in him that your grandpappy bore so tempestuously. In your infancy, your father’s rebellious instincts began to flower. He started to piece together the story of his father and me and the murder. Something had to be done.”

“You didn’t!”

“I most certainly did. The camel collision was no accident… it was a setup. And so my problem was nearly solved…except for that little issue of you. And I thought that the issue of you would be done with, after the Vice Roy sent you away, and then again after you wandered off in the desert with your quartet. But here you are. Making a mess of things the same way your father did and the same way your grandfather did, and accordingly I shall fashion you the same fate.”

Roy the Immortal took a saber tooth tiger’s tooth with a little brownish-red caked on the end of it out from one of the many pockets on his cargo pants. Barba son of Ryan struggled to break free of the antelope-hide knots around his feet and hands, but it was no use. He was gutted and killed right then and there. The quartet was also killed by the Vice Roy’s cadre in an outer room of the palace.

And Roy the Immortal thought his struggle with Barbarism was over and the Lazation would live in stability and propriety under his rule forever. But what Roy the Immortal forgot was a crucial fact about the four tenets of barbarism as opposed to the tenets of the four titans of Kavil-Lazation. While the civilized men had only one or two children in their lifetime for reasons of propriety, the Barbarians, on that one night of partying alone knocked up like 1000 babes (plus 7 mandrills somehow got pregaz). And each of the 1000 babes gave birth to a child that had the barbarian spirit in him. Yes, spreading thy seed prevailed. And as the new generation carried the seed of barbarianism in them, so did the next until mere numbers of barbarians allowed for an abandonment of the restrictive policies of Kavil, and a taking of the Talisman of Immortality from the duodenum of Roy the Immortal. And so began the Time of The Barbarian.

Lactation Without Representation by Yonza the Barbarian

So I was at a conference in DC and there was a buffet for lunch. Of the thirty or so people at the conference I was the first in the hall so the whole setup of salad/tortellini/assorted meats was untouched and preserved in their de novo symmetry. In the hall there were about six round tables, each with about eight chairs on them. My plan was this: since I didn’t know anyone I figured I would get my food and be the first one to sit down and that way, rather than having to choose an arbitrary clique to sit with (the cliques: surgeons, who happened to be the most casually dressed at the conference, which at first you might thing exudes a refreshing down-to-earthiness, but which actually is a fuck-you-I’m-important-enough-that-I-don’t-have-to-dress-upiness. Then there are the coordinators – I am a coordinator, but a sort of second tier coordinator, so this really isn’t my clique. Finally there are the statisticians – Midwestern mamas of mediocrity, full with [what any NYer would see as a] drawl and an irritating niceness) I will have the clique choose me, thus relieving me of any risk of sitting in a socially inappropriate spot (God forbid I sit between two quarreling surgeons, and have to duck below their shouts on whether or not hypotension is ever “planned” during a surgery or if it is merely the “undesired, but foreseen result of certain surgical techniques”).

As it turns out, the Midwestern mamas chose me. If you care how this came to be the case: one of the MWMs was an alum from my alma mater, a similarity we had acknowledged during an exchange of e-mails between my NY office and her AA office, and that and that fact that I was new, and the sad site of me sitting at an empty table picking at tepid tortellini, gave her the (perhaps unwanted) obligation of joining me. When she sat, she made sure to leave a one seat buffer. She was a typical MWM: pink, bloated and blonde. I asked her when she graduated school, and she answered: “he [sic.] graduated in ’04.” I later pieced together that she was talking about her husband; she must have misheard me for some reason.

Directly in tow was the 2nd MWM, who chose to sit directly on my left (leaving two seats between her and the 1st MWM, one of the seats having me in it). She started talking to MWM no. 1 w/o acknowledging me, which made it a little awkward since not only was I right next to her but I was 2/3s of the way between their line of conversation (that’s why, folks, when in doubt, always leave a buffer zone!). Finally I unnaturally interjected an introduction. What I found out was that MWM no. 2 was born in Kansas, and through a bunch of boring twists and turns somehow ended up with her husband in Philli. Her features were not as typically MWMish as no. 1’s: while her skin was pale, it wasn’t pink, and her hair was brunette and a little less than shoulder length ( basically, the length of hair that, when a girl lets it down from ponytail position, it is not long enough to produce any sexy bounce or swing, not that any MWM has ever possessed any sexy bounce or swing in any shape or form with their hair or otherwise) and she wasn’t fat, but to be fair she certainly wasn’t toned.

Then came the final MWM. The mama of the mamas. It was like in the movie Independence Day, when at first you think that the ships hovering over NYC and DC are the Mother-ships to the little fighter spacecrafts that Will Smith commandeers, but then you later found out that actually, the real mother ship is in outer space and it’s like ten times as big. There she was, draped in a cloth that fell off the max r of her distended belly to form what looked like a hoop skirt. She was an amorphous monster, the product of a lipophagic lifestyle characterized by chicken mcnuggets and bacon and salads smothered in ranch dressing. She was that degree of obese when the obesity is what defines you. Where, when anyone looks at you, whether it is a colleague or a teller at the bank, no matter what the purpose for looking at you, when they look at you, what they are thinking is, “Jesus Christ what the hell did she do to herself?” Your fatness, is and always will be, for you my dear MWM no. 3, your defining characteristic, no matter your IQ or ambition or creativity, no one will think of that, it is (here comes the double entendre) the enduring elephant in the room.

When she sat down at the table, a feeling somewhere between sadness and disgust ripped through me. To think that somewhere under the layers of fat, perhaps in a nice warm spot next to her diseased and struggling heart, there is some semblance of a soul, a soul whose machine has be abused into terrible forms. In retrospect, the overwhelming sadness produced by her enormity was not only sad because her life was clearly defined by it, but because it represented something horrible about humanity: that, despite what we think, self-control can slip away and when it does it can produce some twisted things. It made me think of an article I read a few days ago about child prostitution, and how when I read it I wondered how there can exist people who are not only incomprehensibly cruel, but incomprehensibly cruel for not that good a reason, incomprehensibly cruel just to collect a little commission, which is a little puzzling to me b/c by undercutting any ethical obligation (i.e. by forcing prepubescent girls into the sex business) it seems to strip away any value you could get from the world anyway and so would be a self-defeating enterprise (I realize that, as I’ve couched it thus far, this idea of mine is a little abstract, but in order to completely unpack it, it would take a while and I’m already going on a tangent and I don’t want to convolute the essay even more so just bear with me here, okay ya bastards?). My point is that after seeing that No. 3 could walk around and go about her life with such a perverse and festering corporeal condition, it makes me understand how child sex slavery is something that exists.

No. 3 sat down to the right of No. 1, leaving a one seat buffer between them (the buffer between them, though, was a geometric necessity) leaving her three seats to my right and about a 90 degree arc between us. Now I don’t remember exactly how the conversation came to this, but all of a sudden the MWMs started talking about their (eponymous) motherhood, first more benign topics but finally came a conversation on breastfeeding.

Interpolation: I (i.e. the author) am a twenty-something, post-collegiate, angst-ridden, undersexed male, with little plan and high aspirations, living with my parents, working at a job I don’t like with people I don’t get, with a crippling morning-misanthropy, an afternoon anhedonia and a severe distaste for the over-courteous. My point: fatherhood, motherhood, marriage, family, or anything thereof is a decidedly fantastical concept to me, one which I know little about and which I understand not-at-all.

What the hell was I supposed to say? How could I contribute to a conversation about breast feeding – what a foreign concept. I slowly picked at my tepid tortellini as the MWMs shot back and forth anecdotes. I was visibly uncomfortable and at one point No. 3 asked: “I hope you don’t mind that we’re talking about this?” and I laughed back, “Not at all.” (but I was really thinking “Jesus Christ…”). The conversation continued and I did the only thing I could do, which was remain silent and act busy eating my food. Once I scooped up the last twisted circle of tortellini I was put in a quandary: I had no food left with which to focus my attention. I resorted to scraping the bottom of my plate for residual sauces/debris from the food so as to remain busy-looking and thus not conversationally challenged. Then came the horrifying reality that No. 3 is talking about breastfeeding, and that entails that she has breast fed. First of all, when you are as fat as she is, breasts cease to take on any real meaning besides as yet another fat-filled lump on a torso full of ‘em. If she didn’t have nipples, I bet her baby wouldn’t know her tits from her tummy. Second, to have a child, coitus presumably had taken place at some point in her pathologically distended past. For a while I tried to calculate the mechanics and kinematics of it, but I had little success. You would need an experienced engineer in order to draw a blue print of how that would work.

In the end, my boss, a first-tier coordinator, came over to the table and saved me from my awkward position amongst the lacto-babbling MWMs. That gave me the chance to abruptly and fully divert the topic of conversation and so I was home free. I then left the MWM table ASAP (I could have said, “I need to use the restroom” or “Would you excuse me” but I just got the hell out of that ring spitfire without saying anything) walked outside and shook the heebie-jeebies out of me.

So? It's Only The Future of The Country, or Mashed Potatoes - by Danny Boy

Despite my obvious fondness for good grub, the first presidential debate of the year was the last program from which I expected a culinary lesson might be derived. Yet, to my surprise, I received an important one: how to peel a potato. You simply apply the blade to the pinkish skin, incise, and strip away the skin - the external, the excess, that is - blemishes and all. Now it's ready for mashing, a less delicate but more gratifying experience. It is, of course, best served piping hot.

Tonight - and on many other nights, I suspect - Barack Obama was simply the sharpest instrument, the one doing all the slicing. Just as he called on the Republicans and the Bushies for shredding regulation practices, Obama shredded McCain, prompting an irritating series of phrases and attitudes from the Methuselan senator that reflect not only his developing senility, but also his inability to participate in true, interactive debate.

From the very beginning, I suppose, we were lucky to be graced with McCain's presence. It was so very bold and thoughtful of him to decide that enough progress had been made on the emergency government bailout (even though Washington Mutual crashed yesterday) that he could fulfill his duty to the American public by appearing in Oxford and, you know, give us even the most rudimentary explication and outline of his would-be policies, were he to be elected president.

And from the very beginning, he looked, shall we say, like a vegetable (a potato, perhaps?). One that Obama peeled and mashed as expertly as any chef or professional potato peeler. In response to Obama's superior confidence and command of the material, McCain could only resort to political parlor tricks unbecoming even of a shriveled statesman at his stage of advanced organic decay. His nervous laugh and microphone battering hands, his embarrassing condescension, his increasingly bowed and hunched posture all suggested a beaten and beleaguered man. His failure to meet anyone's eye but the moderator's and his emphasis on his Record - the omnipotent, inalienable Record - were the tactics of a boxer beaten back into his corner. Unlike Ali playing dead on the ropes in Zaire, this one was not just biding his time waiting to deliver the knockout punch.

McCain just looked old. His posture and the slope of his shoulders suggested the presence of a hanger where there was none. Whereas Obama was competitive and disciplined, McCain was patronizing and ponderous. Obama's speech was quick, deliberate, and energized; McCain's uneasy and labored. His fallback phrases ("my record," "cut spending," "where am I?") stopped working after their first utterance, yet he maintained the arrogance and self-righteousness of an uncompromising elder. His repeated questioning of Obama's "understanding" evinced an attitude that serves only to underscore, reflexively, McCain's fundamental disconnect with the current state of affairs. To label Obama's articulate, worldly, and frankly more accurate estimations of America and its place in global markets and relations as either a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding is to look through a cycloptic lens and to ignore a mound of mounting evidence to the contrary.

It was heartening to check the polls after and see that Obama has a lead, albeit a frighteningly tenuous one. When the opposition ticket consists of Mr. Potatohead and a total psychopath witchhunter, it becomes unclear why Obama has not already have unanimously declared imperial ruler of the universe by default.

On a related note, Matt Damon is the man.

Grilling a Mean Steak, or The Case for Carnivores - by Danny Boy

Now I don't mean to interrupt the telling of classic myth and lore, but all the chatter about antelope and mammoth summoned my appetite. Which is why I'm about to detail a skill many seek to attain and is actually possessed by far too few. Moreover, it is a crucial ability for any well-rounded Barbarian aspirant. And furthermore, this recipe provides you with a good reason to stroll down to your nearest butcher and pick out the most appetizing upside-down-hanging, raw hunk of meat.

the Marinade
1/2 cup of lemon juice
1/2 cup of brown sugar
4 tablespoons of dijon mustard
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of pepper

Mix all that together and add garlic to your liking. It may sound like a 19th Century concoction to cure polio, or a green way to lubricate your car engine, but it's actually quite - to steal a word from a friend - robustful. Take my word for it.

the Steak
Marinate the steak for up to a day. The longer it sits, the stronger the flavor. Douse the coals with lighter fluid or crank up the gas, and grill the steak on a medium flame for 8-12 minutes a side, depending on the cut and how you like it cooked. The marinade is enough for a 1 1/2 pound piece of meat, so go nuts. After 20 minutes or so on the grill, hoist a mug of suds and enjoy.

The First Barbarian: Part V - Glory, by Danny Boy

For even if it lies dormant, like a slumbering giant or quiet volcano, the soul cannot deny the spirit that resides within it and the uncanny power in its awakening. Like the chocolate encased in an M&M candy-shell, the sweet Essential must one day be tasted, even if it melts in the hot and humid habitat of your mouth, not your hand. And Barba son of Ryan led his weary faithful back to the great ivory gate. As they approached, Dipsi the Maniac asked of his leader;

"What do you intend to do here, Barba?" The group came to a stop as Barba son of Ryan whirled around to face them. It was very dramatic.

"I have come to realize something, dear Quartet," Barba began. "You see all this time, I have been searching for something. I did not know what it was, but I knew that I must find it. It has taken me long enough, but what I have realized, my friends, is that you must always follow your heart. And if what we want is wine, women, and snacks, then we must make wine, women, and snacks for ourselves. If you cannot be true to yourself, you cannot be. That is the Barbarian way." And then he pounded on the door and led them into the city of Lazation.

"Gentlemen," Barba spoke, his voice booming like a cannonball, "I intend to party my leopardskin off."

Whereupon Barba son of Ryan and the Quartet went on the biggest booze run ever, way bigger than Prom, Spring Fling and an average dinner at Hank Moody's combined. They loaded up on awesome and unheard-of snacks like dunk-a-roos, cheddar goldfish, and shark bites (and presciently threw away all the purple ones, since nobody likes grape-flavored candy). They brought out their drums and built a leaping fire and chanted their tunes under the winking stars, and the bright full moon smiled on them as He crossed the sky, ordaining their festivities with his solemn, celestial shine.

And although Barba and the apostles were unsure who, if anyone, would attend - in fact, they would have been just as happy with a sausage fest; sometimes guys need a guys' night - their glee went uncontained when droves of humming people showed up in their gladdest rags. It had been a rather long while since the citizens of Lazation had been given the chance to throw down, and Barba's party had all the makings of a great one - it was illegal.

Soon the party was rumbling. It resembled that party in Zion from The Matrix: Reloaded, except not totally weird and lame. The women swooned and gyrated sensually while the men quaffed great chalices of mead and showed off their virility by making their pecs dance alternately, a feat that never failed to charm the human ladies. Together these ancients gave a whole new meaning to the term "clubbing."

Late that night Barba son of Ryan stumbled outside, his belly full of meat and drink, his libido momentarily curbed but still far from satisfied, his knucklehair matted into sweaty, twisted thickets. He craned his bulbous head to the heavens and let out a terrific and triumphant howl that would shame Tarzan, Ginsberg, or even DNC Chariman Howard Dean. A salty drop of bittersweet happiness pooled in the corner of his eye as Barba thought of Ryan, Barba, and Kemba - those who had helped him on his way, made sure that he stayed true. He lost consciousness in a bed full of women, with some blue-nosed mandrills in there for good measure, confident that he had just thrown the greatest party Lazation had ever seen.

When he woke in the gray dawn, it was neither the pounding ache between his eyes nor the desert that had settled unwelcome on his tongue that stirred him. It was the incessant toe tapping of that damned Vice Roy, standing over him, hands at his hips, a-tisk-tisking.

The First Barbarian: Part IV - Wanderings, by Yonza the Barbarian

Barba son of Ryan led his quartet out of the city into the desert. They wandered with the sun on their backs and with civilization a forgotten word. They were forever free, and for this they were grateful. But they were not totally satisfied. After all, what is freedom without food, wine and women? And plus it was really hot. Probably over 90 degrees everyday, although to be fair it got pretty cool at night, but sometimes a little too cool and then they were chilly.

The quartet spoke to each other behind their leaders back during their times of wandering. Riban son of Willhims inquired: “Was Barba son of Ryan afraid to challenge the Vice Roy? Has he not the Barbarian pride?” The men were getting tired and hot. Sand storms swept the land violently, and they got sand in their pants which itched. Barba son of Ryan sensed a mutinous sentiment growing in the men. He knew something had to be done.

During a sleepless night in the desert after many months of wandering, Barba son of Ryan walked away from his camp and yelled into the sky: “Mother, the former she-goddess, the God Barba, hear my pleas. The quartet is tired. They need wine and women and food. Help us. Drain wine from the earth! Rain bread from the skies! Bring women from the air! Mother, my blood, fulfill this request and I will be grateful.” Barba son of Ryan yelled loud enough that the quartet could hear him, and they all snickered because he was asking his mom for help. Unfortunately, Barba son of Ryan’s humiliation was for naught, because the god Barba was on the planet Pluto hunting for Space-Mammoths, and sound waves can’t travel through a vacuum i.e. outer space.

The men wandered for another decade. Their feet became callous as well as their hearts. The quartet had planned a mutiny and it was about to come to its crisis when who should they see wandering in the desert but a lion -- it was Kemba! The men could tell because of a big scar on Kemba’s cheek that he got from falling off a waterfall and scraping his face on a big rock in the middle of the River of Nispair the Titan. Kemba walked up to the men and let out a treacherous roar. Then he spoke in the voice of Ryan son of Kavil: “Son, it is I, your father. When I perished in that camel accident in your infancy I was given demi-god status by your mother Barba. Your mother and I have been watching you from our house on Mercury and we have been proud of you. But these past years, you have led your men astray. Where hast gone thy booze? Where hast gone thy chow? Where hast gone thy honeys? And I see you’re still hairy so that’s good. But you only have one of the four qualities of the Barbarian: that is not enough.

“As you know demi-god’s can inhabit the body of mortals, so I have returned to earth in this form, of your friend Kemba the lion. And I am here to tell you to challenge the Vice Roy; to return to the city of your birth; the city of my birth. It was there that the three days of darkness fell upon the earth, and in the three days I felt, for the first time, the twinkle of Barbarism in my heart and my loins. And it was in that third day of darkness that you were conceived in a murky lagoon in the western plateaus, and from my seed sprung the New spirit, the spirit of the barbarian, and it is in you.”

The demi-god soul-smoke of Ryan son of Kavil left through the mouth of Kemba. Kemba, of course, died since once you are inhabited by a demi-god your organ systems stop functioning completely. Barba son of Ryan announced that they would return to his city of birth, the city of Lazation, and that they would practice the four virtues of the Barbarian whether everyone else liked it or not. And if everyone else didn’t like it, well, then they would challenge the Vice Roy to a vicious fist fight.

The First Barbarian: Part III - The Return, by Danny Boy

And so it came to pass that Barba son of Ryan and his apostles landed on the rocky shore of the land that had once been his home. "You will love it here," Barba assured his followers, "or I'll be a mandrill's lover." Neither wanton Wilt nor ruffled Riban, craving Kobi or dizzy Dipsi were privy to all the intimate details of their leader's lewd and indiscriminating love life, and so they did not take his guarantee with as much levity as perhaps they should have.

Banded together they traipsed through the wilderness toward the towering stone entrance of Barba's birth city. Animals picked up on a foreign yet familiar funk, and flocked in awe to watch the hairy, malodorous group rumble across the jungle floor. All but the sabertooth tiger kept their distance, well aware of the legendary appetite the exiled son possessed. Word had it that at his most hungry, not even a XXL Hungry-Man Meatloaf dinner could satiate him. Nor could working his jaws on hippopotamus blubber.

"Ah, Kemba!" Barba son of Ryan shouted, recognizing an old friend skulking in the brush, and running towards the mangy lion wrapped his heavy arm around its royal mane. He introduced the apostles to Kemba one by one, an introduction Kemba acknolwedged by yawning lazily and pawing the zebra carcass that lay beside him.

Barba son of Ryan and his entourage finally arrived at the city gate, the wild cats of the jungle slinking suavely in their wake. The exiled son raised his hand and shouted "Gunga, Gunga Galunga!" with all the air in his lungs and rapped his knuckles three times against the heavy door. "Let me enter!" he bellowed. Never before had they seen such pomp or security, and the apostles stared eagerly at each other; Kobi's mouth watered for a Hebrew National.

Slowly the tall door creaked open, and as Barba strolled in, his crew in toe, he was met with many a dropped jaw and widened eye. Imagine the surprise jolting these simple citizens, to have banished such a man, such a creature, only to have it return seven years later, and with four more creatures just like it! Men covered the eyes of their partners, fearing (rightfully) that such a sight would change them forever. Women that managed to sneak a peek shrieked deliriously, and young children - unaware of the identities of the visitors or the significance of their coming - belched and expelled flatulence, having nothing better to do.

Just then the old Vice Roy appeared. "What are you doing here, Barba son of Ryan? You've been exiled." Everybody paused in their tracks.

"It's time that I returned," Barba replied, winking slyly. "I told you I would."

"And I told you to stop joking around!" the Vice Roy spat. "And you promised that you'd never come back." The apostles began to move restlessly.

"I had my fingers crossed behind my back when I said that!" Barba whooped defiantly. "So Nyuh." The Vice Roy grimaced at the ground, disgusted. "So do you guys have any ketchup? Me and my buddies are famished and I was thinking I'd go out and bring us a nice, woolly, mammo-"

But Barba son of Ryan was interrupted by the Vice Roy, who clapped his hands together in the midst of his speech. Immediately a line of guards formed. They wore the furs of mammoth and bear, and aimed their spears at Barba and his apostles.

Then Barba sounded his mighty whistle (you know, the one where you put two fingers in your mouth - that one. Barba had been practicing for a long time), and the apostles assembled behind him in their attack position, forming the dreaded Barba Chop-Quartet. For a long moment they stood ready, waiting tense for the signal from their leader to unleash themselves. But the signal never came. Barba's fist, wound into a ball at his side, raised slowly towards the sky and the wind kindled behind his growl.

"So be it," Barba son of Ryan began. "We want no part of your foolishness. Remain within your walls. We will do as we want." And he grabbed Wilt son of Chamberlain by the arm - as he had begun sweet-talking a sweet maiden - and led his boys outside, into the free world.

The First Barbarian: Part II – Exile by Yonza the Barbarian

News of Barba son of Ryan’s birth swept from cave to cave like wildfire. He was a site to be seen: as hairy as a wooly mammoth, and as hungry as six wooly mammoths. By the time he was four he could eat an entire antelope in an hour. By the time he was six, he ate elephants in a single meal. And when he was hungry, he got what he wanted. Some would say, “Barba son of Ryan, you eat so much! You mustn’t have any more!” But Barba son of Ryan rejoined: “Hungry. Why wait?” He drank wine in excess and lusted after all women. When he wasn’t making love to women, he was making love to the blue-nosed mandrills that swung form the tree outside his cave.

He was different from the rest of his kind. The humans said he was of Neanderthal upbringing, and the Neanderthals said he was of human upbringing. They chastised Barba son of Ryan: of eating away the great surplus, of drinking away the libations, of carrying lice and worms in his chest hair and spreading disease that way, of having sex with mandrills. And when they accused him Barba spoke in a mighty whisper, so powerful it blew the clouds out of the sky: “Harm me not, for I am not cruel, I am that I am.” But nobody understood what he meant, and the cruel misunderstanding of society spread like locusts during the spring of 100,026 BC. Society banished Barba son of Ryan, telling him never to return to Africa.

Barba son of Ryan had no choice but to obey. In the name of propriety, the Vice Roy of Africa promised Barba son of Ryan that upon his departure he would be granted four requests. Barba son of Ryan said: “I need no time to think. I have my four requests. 20 loaves of bread, one for each year I lived in my mother, the God Barba. Four satchels of wine, one for each of my so-called flaws: hairiness, desire for drink, lust, gluttony. Twenty-six concubines from the Northwest delta – one for each year I have lived. Finally I would like seven hair-braids with which to braid the hair on my body – one for each year I spend away before my return.”

His four requests were granted, but the Vice Roy gave a stern warning, he said that Barba son of Ryan better have been facetious about “returning” because he was supposed to be banished for good, not just seven years. Barba son of Ryan nodded his head, but he winked and so the Vice Roy gave a second warning: he told Barba son of Ryan to stop joking around, and that he saw him wink. Barba son of Ryan then stopped playing games, and just left.

For seven years the great civilization of Africa kept as usual. The men ate the right amount and kept their partners for life. They drank wine in moderation, and were by-and-large hairless. Meanwhile Barba son of Ryan had traveled north across the Mediterranean sea and scoured the earth. During his travels he met four men, each of whom had a virtue which he saw in himself. Riban son of Willhims from the Mediterranean archipelago was known for his extraordinary mane of back hair, which flowed elegantly down in spiraling braids. There was Kobi son of Yashi, who haled from the Far East. Some say he could eat over 60 hot dogs in twelve minutes. There was Wilt son of Chamberlain, who was born in Africa but had traveled north in a log-boat. He had loved over 20,000 women. Finally, there was Dipsi the Maniac, whose love for wine had driven him mad. The five men became known throughout the Mediterranean and were named after the leader: they were called the Barbarians.

Together the Barbarians formed two parts: their leader, Barba son of Ryan, and his four apostles, also known as the quartet. The Barbarians lived in a drunken, orgiastic, hairy eating binge for many years. Then one day Barba son of Ryan announced that he had made a facetious promise seven years back that he had to keep. And so the men all squeezed onto Wilt son of Chamberlain’s log-boat (it was really long, so they all could fit pretty easily) and they floated back to Africa.

The First Barbarian: Part I by Yonza the Barbarian

Before there were barbarians, the world lived in peace. Men and Neanderthals, wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers, they all loved each other, and they all loved every other member of the animal kingdom. It was a time of unfettered civilization, where civility was a virtue beyond all others, and where propriety was not merely the norm but the Only. Gluttony and lust were unheard of: you ate your proper amount and you loved your partner for life. You sipped your wine, but not to excess. You expressed your disagreement, but you didn’t bear your anger.

In this time, the time of civilization, peace reigned over the land, and everyone had according to need. The year: 100,000 BC. The place: Africa. Some scholars say it was a happy time. Other scholars say it was a time of contentment, but not necessarily a time of overwhelming glee. Others say it was a stifling time, when art suffered in the name of domestication.

The crucial moment, the moment that changed the course of history, was a hot day in 99,999 B.C.: July 4th…Independence Day. A fierce wind came from the east, and swept the antelope across the plains. A darkness fell on all of Africa, for three days and three nights. And the people waited, sat hushed in the cool, damp cave dwellings. They cuddled with their saber tooth tigers, and groomed their wooly mammoths. The Neanderthals, the heliolaters, danced their ritual dances. But no matter how hard they danced, no matter how many times they popped-and-locked, the sun stayed occluded.

Meteorologists of today have studied this event, but few have any explanations of why darkness swept the land, and most of the explanations are far-fetched or obsolete. One leading theory is that a black hole temporarily sucked up the sun, but then because of Hawking radiation the sun was radiated back out in three days. Many physicists contend that this explanation does not make sense, since a black hole would suck up the earth too. Other physicists argue back that maybe the earth was sucked up in a black hole, and that is actually why it was dark. Other physicists say that couldn’t be, because then everyone would be dead. To this, experimental physicists at NASA have said that maybe the hawking radiation brought everyone back to life. Then philosophers argue that hawking radiation couldn’t transmit souls, and so even if it did bring people back to life, they wouldn’t have souls, and if you don’t have a soul then you’re not a real person but an automata.

But perhaps there is no scientific explanation for the three days of darkness. Certainly, for the people of Africa, it was an event that transcended any earthly explanations. So for one day everyone waited, and even though the people were scared, civilization was maintained. During the second day of darkness, the Neanderthals, who had spent over 24 hours dancing, and popping-and-locking, fell asleep. And even though mankind was scared, and the Neanderthals were sleeping, everyone kept their civility.

Twelve hours into day three a funny thing happened. A barrel-chested troglodyte rustled himself up off his wooly mammoth bed and peeked out of his cave. He was curious and began wandering outside in the darkness in the Africa plains. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Darkness all around and not a soul in sight. You see, society was so civilized that everyone followed a strict curfew and went to bed before the sun set. Standing in the plains, staring out into the star-speckled blackness of the universe, the man, whose birth name was Ryan son of Kavil, felt something he had never felt before. In all the annals and tomes that document this momentous event in the history of human kind, I have never seen a paragraph that could accurately describe what Ryan son of Kavil felt. The simplest way to describe it was a mixture of angst and overwhelming freedom. Ryan son of Kavil ran unfettered through the deep African grass, and splashed through the murky lagoons of the Western plateaus. It was in one of these lagoons that he saw, silhouetted in the darkness, the she-goddess Barba. That night, together in the murky lagoon, they boned to the squawking stridence of vulture-raptors.

After a twenty year incubation period, when the three nights of darkness only remained a distant memory of the elders, Barba went into labor. For seven days and six nights, Barba was in labor. Ryan son of Kavil, who by then was an old man, sat by Barba for all seven days. And on the seventh day, a baby boy emerged from Barba the She-goddesses snatch. Barba had died in labor, and transcended from her human form into a full God and floated up to space, like a hot air balloon in the springtime. Ryan son of Kavil shed seven tears, one for each day Barba was in labor. And in honor of Barba, Ryan son of Kavil named his one and only child: Barba son of Ryan.

The New Genius and The Old Problems by Yonza the Barbarian

No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words, up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens…and it opens outward – we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.

- DFW, Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness

I chose this epigraph not so much for its profundity, but for the fact that it was the shortest DFW quote that I could responsibly crop from the page without doing his thought stream injustice (and I wouldn’t dare to it injustice because then I would be forced to rectify it with footnotes (and maybe even footnotes to those footnotes).). But at least I get a chance to honor the great David Foster Wallace, who, in my meager reading of him, I’ve come to appreciate as a genius. But his genius isn’t the type of genius we normally attribute to writers or artists or musicians. It is a new genius, a genius, which while not identical, is much more closely related to that of great mathematicians or economists or physicists or philosophers. It was Socrates, as attributed to him in Plato’s Apology, who said that the poets don’t even know what their writing means. And he’s got something there: the process of writing, as is true with the major disciplines subsumed under the heading of ‘arts,’ comes more from inspiration than from deduction or calculation, and so the rudimentary machinations of art-creation are hidden under the tarp of the unconscious. It is the same as the graceful contortions of an athlete’s body during a high-pressure play: if you were to ask him how or even what exactly he did, he would not be able to give you a very detailed or satisfactory answer. So many minute movements and unconscious calculations go on in an athletes mind there is no way all of it is within the breadth of awareness. And the same with the geniuses of art: the timeless complexity of great works is too much for an artist to be aware of.

But DFW is a new type of genius. He is a genius not by inspiration, but by overwhelming awareness; awareness of the world, awareness facts, awareness of knowledge, but most important of all, awareness of his own self, his own cognitive mechanisms and buried motivations. He was a car with the hood ripped right off, and he could see inside: the battery, the motor, the pistons, the poppet valves, all revealed to inspect as well as anyone could inspect the road ahead of them. And with the engine revealed, DFW had access to stuff that most of us don’t or only get access to with exhausting introspection. This is why DFW uses so many footnotes; a footnote is a whisper of our unconscious, a tangential thread that is just barely thick enough to register, but which we feel moderately obliged to include in an argument. But DFW did not see threads; he saw webs! He saw each diverging thought and counterargument and where it led to and the responses to all that and so on and so forth. And they didn’t whisper from his unconscious, they spoke with a firm voice. DFW could not ignore them. When we see a red light flash in that glassed off control area above our dashboard as if there might be a problem, we might often ignore it, thinking it is no big deal But if we could see the light AND see that the engine was smoking, then we couldn’t ignore it. DFW always saw the engine, and it was always smoking.

The New Genius of DFW does not make him superhuman, of course. The footnotes, while revealing a certain cognitive perspicuity, can be a burden to read: linearity is good unless the very tangent the footnote tackles happens to be especially revealing to the reader, for example, if the reader notices a hole in DFW’s argument, then looking for a footnote will usually do a fine job of patching it up. For me, the footnotes are not necessary reading. They are optional. And when read that way it makes some of DFW’s writings less of a struggle to read, or at least, it isolates the struggles to looking up words in the dictionary.

Now I must admit, DFW’s suicide last Friday came as a surprise to me. I don’t know why, but I thought of him as a haughty but happy-go-lucky person. So let me do a little DFWing and try to figure out why I thought of him that way: he’s a writer (low pressure), teacher (directly contributes to others well being), he has money (McArthur genius award: $500,000), gets to investigate lots of interesting things (see Big Red Son), good weather (Claremont, California). Seems pretty good. But most of all, what made me envision his temperament this way, was the fact that his writing lacked the despair-factor that makes it so unsurprising when a writer commits suicide or resorts to alcoholism. Write a book about being impotent in the face of true love, and when you off yourself f I’ll say, “sad, but it figures.” But DFW rarely came off as despairing; he came off as a smart-alecky jokester that was against taking anything too seriously. In fact, one of the few things he did seem to take seriously was the lack of seriousness in writing today (see DFW’s essay Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky starting at the quotation from The Idiot). For me, it seemed (and perhaps still seems) like the key to a totally fulfilling and contentful life: being creative and not taking things too seriously. If you have those two abilities in life, I thought/think, you’re golden. But against my conjecture came the cold, impregnable wall of empiricism: he hanged himself. He wasn’t happy. And hanging, by the way, also seemed to me like a very un-DFWish way to off yourself. I feel like he would be the first to criticize how trite and melodramatic hanging is. There are plenty of bridges and tall buildings: if you really hate the world that much why put in the effort to make a neuse? And where did he hang from, anyway? I’m thinking now, and I can’t think of anyplace around my house that would make a nice hangman gallows? Maybe he had a deck?

But when this guy, this New Genius, who I thought was happy-go-lucky, killed himself it made me think about something – all these geniuses, artists, these greats, these idols with whose virtues and ideals and lifestyles so many people try or wish to emulate, whose paths we praise as noble and whose experience we describe as great or fulfilling – that all these people are not happier than we are. How many suicides and alcoholics and drug addicts do we have to see before we realize the mundane life, quality-wise, is not much different from the aggrandized, “noble” life of the artist? We all want to believe that their path is the greatest for some reason, that starving for a passion is somehow more respectable than the dreary alternatives.

Here is the fight song for that ideal -- the poem Roll the Dice by Bukowski:

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.
otherwise,

don’t even start.
if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs

andmaybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on apark bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean

derision,mockery,isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of yourendurance,

of how much you really want to

do it.
and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the worst odds

and it will be better than

anything elseyou can imagine.
if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like that.
you will be alone with the gods

and the nights will flame with fire.

do it, do it, do it.do it.
all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight toperfect laughter,

its the only good fightthere is.

The last line gets me every time: “It’s the only good fight there is.” I want to cheer for it. I want to say ‘yes’ and go out and live the miserly life of an unrecognized poet, and suffer, and “be alone with the gods.” And more than this, is that second order desire: the desire to believe that it is the only good fight. But I don’t believe that, no matter how much I desire to. Or, let me rephrase. It’s not that I don’t believe it, but the way in which I believe it is not straightforward, and it changes from day-to-day and hour-to-hour. Sometimes I become disheartened, and the sense in which I believe it is not-at-all. Take this: the epithet on Bukowski’s gravestone: “Don’t Try.” Of all the ways to throw my mind into a confusion! And on a gravestone, no less: how can you argue with that? So which one is it, Bukowski? And why so serious, DFW? Where do I want to go? Which side of the door am I on?