Thursday, February 19, 2009

Everyone Else is Doing It

Whenever you listen to a live album recorded in Japan the crowd sounds hysterial.

Doesn't matter if it's Cheap Trick or Brian Seitzer, they go nuts.

Written by 20-somethings dressed like Lolita in Wonderland, cell-phone novels (Keitai Shosetsu) about girls who learn their lovers are half-brothers, or who sell themselves to pay for their boyfriend's operation but die of AIDS instead, garner 1.8 million hits, and are replicated in manga, film and hardcover.

While technology empowers the freedom to type 10,000 words a day on an hour's bullet train commute, what's written so, tends to reinforce traditional values.

The women who write Keitai Shosetsu nevertheless are considered slightly abnormal (otaku).

Less a commercial venture, slightly abnormal English otaku William Tyndale, utilizing new 16th century techology, fatally, manages to change history

The Spotsyltuckian stalks out of a lecture by tv critic Marvin Kitson after he opens by stating there is nothing on but public television.

Clive James enrages by writing that "the story of a mentality as gripping as a thriller equals the same thrill as what the numberless readers of a book like the DaVinci Code are really after: they have just chosen arid territory in which to seek it."

Sez who.

Listen to Zappa, then, Michael W. Smith.

In the aptly named, Duty of Delight, slightly abnormal otaku Dorothy writes, "the professor has been out on a drunk and is lying trembling in his room while he is here. He has just stolen $5 from me, the dollars we had to send the sharecropper packages of clothes, and he must be tormented in soul as in body, weary of the idea of personal responsibility."

This is helpful.

Our slightly abnormal Pope, the Times reports, is "a theologian more at home in the library than the stadium Mass, more attuned to many doctrinal questions rather than potential political ramifications," like obsessing upon the efficacy of indulgences intended to reduce sentences in Purgatory.

While not helpful, it is so weird, it's definitely otaku.

Slightly abnormal impact is dependent upon reach and investment.

Otaku-Spotsyltuckian could be a Japanese cult favorite.

I wish.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Hard Science

During the winter of 1777/1778, as back-bites pierced his hide as bullets never could, George Washington wrote, "whenever the public gets dissatisfifed with my services, or a person is found better qualified to assume her expectations, I shall quit the helm and retire to private life with as much content as ever the wearied pilgrim felt upon his safe arrival in the Holy Land."

Leaving, at last, on his own terms, he retired, indeed, to private life, upon the rolling banks of the bucolic Virginia riverside.

--the public role he played, featured, in the end, less idealism than a practicality borne of experience.

Friend Larry and I often lament the absence of a Sports Management degree program at the time we attended University. The game afoot, in those days, political science, yielded only one lesson of use, a lifelong practice of the Hawthorne Effect.

Stefan Zweig, per Clive James, says Montaigne read history not in order to become learned but to see how other men handled events and to set himself beside them.

A recent study at Durham University comparing subject difficulties found some signicantly harder than others -- so much so a student could expect two grades higher in the easiest than the hardest.

The accompanying chart in the Economist conveys Science the hardest. It is well History exceeded the complexity cut (as opposed, for example, to Film Studies, the easiest, thereby degrading, appreciably, the A achieved in Hitchcock, many summers ago).

A desire to know Hard Science remains despite an F in Chemistry, and D's in Biology and Ecology. Accordingly, by page 20, I was more lost in Dawkins' Ancestors Tale than the species listed as extinct, though, efforts continue, lately, with 'Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs, Soft Tissues and Hard Science.'

Dinosaurs is where it starts for boys, at least, those of our generation, who marvelled hearing Cronkite intone how awesome it might have been to face an Allosaur football team.

Upon becoming a soft tissue dinosaur, myself, I'm entitled to (per M. Porter, concluding, in the manner of Professor Eobard Thawne, the devolution of Big Monkey to Little Fish) a singular world of my own creation.

Mr. Rat further dichotomizes this theme, declaring, in The Wind in the Willows, "it's my world, and I don't want any other; what it hasn't got is not worth knowing, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing," simultaneously pointing out, perhaps, conversely, in relation to Toad, "he was going to spend the rest of his life in a houseboat -- it's all the same whatever he takes up; he gets tired of it and starts on something new."

What remains, upon retirement, to carry anew for the cause?

Spielberg, dedicated publicly to Shoah, intends to film Tintin, whose creator Herge, as the Economist demonstrates, "spent the war working for LeSoir, a Belgian newspaper seized by German occupiers and turned into a propaganda organ, usually explained by Herges' naivety as an author of children's comics (a defense also used for Wodehouse)."

Springsteen, pop market purveyor of Pete Seeger - famed labor balladeer - cuts an exclusive deal with the fanatically anti-union Wal-mart.

Is consistency, mandate, over a lifetime?

Our local rag this week contains an obit of a 96-year old woman who attended the same church for more than 80 years.

Does longevity, alone, distill inconsistency?

Joseph Ellis (himself accused of certain inconsistencies) writes Washington loathed "any form of dependency," holding a "deep distrust of any authority beyond his direct control."

Assuming this status is achieved by retirement, to what is the retiree still bound?

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Irresistable Urge to Solve Technical Problems

At the retirement open house, the Mentor said, "the real reason the Spotsyltuckian loves the beloved machine is its dependability."

The builders of the machines no longer have a place at the table.

That's not all bad.

Raised an industrial apprentice, the Dickensian way, S. offers, "once we separate the men from the boys, it's of no concern when workers at minimum wage come and go."

A., for similar reasons, doesn't believe it worthwhile to train anyone.

Racist, sexist, their day is past.

Their lasting legacy, nevertheless, remains efficiency.

Is the latter possible absent the former?

Yes: with access to the machine shop restored for repair - management trusting to pride of ownership - productivity soars.

Though ends do not justify means, in pursuit of ends, we often lose sight.

When a technical glitch surfaces in the design of the replacement for the beloved machine, our team resolves it.

We've already discussed the preeminence of duty whether or not the employer or task is worthy.

When Mr. Hardhead offers donations to our shelter, re-directing funds from the Diocese, from which he was in dispute, and I was not, the temptation to accept, clouds better judgment.

The resolution of the technical glitch described above can not excuse the result, in the name of a greater good, so why do it?

Prior to World War I, German industry triumphed in the manufacture of synthetic dyes and fertilizer. Unforseen consequences surfaced (then, and twenty-five years later) when a national need for the by-product, poison gas, was introduced which appealed not only to their patriotism, but as a challenge to the ingenuity of Jewish engineers dedicated to problem resolution.

Len Wein's Starbreaker (JLA 29) says, "eon's ago, I learned the greatest energies are contained in the bright minds and dark emotions of intelligent beings survive on the karmic energy of human suffering."

More innocuous, perhaps more terrible, is a heedless response to an irresistable urge to solve any current technical problem.

Richard Fortney says in Dry Storeroom No. 1, "a museum is a place where the visitor can come to examine evidence."

Jokes continued to entertain, during the retirement open house, as they had for years, on moving the beloved machines to the Museum of My Front Yard.

Fortney, reflecting upon a Diplodicus exhibit, writes, "not that I regard a constructed replica of an ancient fossil as an old friend, it is just consoling to pass the time of day with something that changed little in a mutable world."

Dependability has more than one meaning.

Friday, January 30, 2009

I Think We Must Try

On Independence Avenue two days after the Inaugruation, a wind-swept nun garbed in fluttering black and white habit steps off a bus to direct anti-choice foot traffic.

A week later, Josef Ratzinger un-excommunicates Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust denier.

When the Faun is kidnapped, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Susan says, "I don't want to go further and I wish we'd never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever his-name-is."

--afterwards, the 214th Council of the Diocese of Virginia meets to consider:

R4a - Integrity of Committed Relationships (1) a response pastoral; (2) an affirmation of the integrity of committed Christian relationships;

R5 - a Blessing of the Union of Same-Gender Couples;

R6 - an Inclusiveness in Ordained Ministry.

For some, it was as if, per Busiek's Trinity 34, "the tactics of the struggle are simple. Reality is convulsing gouting out chaos rifts as it tries to stablize itself. We can hold out until reality can be prepared - reset to what it should be."

For others, the injustice inherent upon the restoration of stability is no longer acceptable in the name of tactics.

If your Spotsyltuckian would have been sufficiently brave to approach the mike, he might have said:

"As a member of a continuing church, our stability has been rent asundered yet our church life is not centered upon resolution of the property issues. The pain of separation has left deep scars yet we are grown to be the change categorized by the three resolutions even if not consecrated to practice the rites. I have no doubt if the progress inherent in R5 and R6 had been brought to the floor, they would have passed, just as the four amendments to dissolve or weaken R4a, were defeated one by one. Left only by the symbolic upon which to vote, the symbolic becomes the single thread of progress. It's passage looms larger than it's effect, but leaving nothing else, it becomes worthy of passage. Our struggle as a small parish is as nothing compared to our glbt brethren who face injustice, persecution and violence, but our experience is respected and honored by the passage of R4a."

Amidst the parliamentary, the Spirit dwells:

--in a courtesty resolution noting the passing of Harry Raab, a Virginia gentleman, whose gracious presence lifted many an ordinary Stewardship campaign;

--in the sweet melodius air of 'One Bread, One Body,' and 'Oh, let the Son of God enfold you;'

--in the mutual recognition, of the Archbishop of Wales, to the delights of a chilly horse-back ride upon Snowdonia followed by a pint of Mackesons in the warm pub below.

Laura Miller says, "many adults view growing up as a kind of tragedy whose casualties include innocence and the capacity for whole-hearted make-believe."

It would be easy at this stage for the Spotsyltuckian in retirement to retreat behind a warren of stacked books at Standhill House to gaze in wonder upon the tracks in the snow.

--but as hard it is to go a step further, we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name-is.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Farewell to all Stat

The link to Protoball in a SABR email depicts baseball at Allens Pasture, Richmond, 1884.

A deeper view of the pastoral landscape reveals William (Billy) Nash, b. 1865, d. 1929 (cremated), playing '84-'98; managing April 96 - September 96; as ump in '01, ejecting three.

--a large story buried under small facts.

The 2008 Baseball Research Journal features, Clutch Hitting, on the Jamesian Mapping the Fog controversy; no less than four statisticians-cum-authors.

Whether clutch hitting exists or not is fascinating.

-- a story become small buried under large facts.

Then there is Batting Stance Guy, a man of extensive research, yet, the essence of our national past-time, glorious goof, is not lost in calculation.

Laura Linney says she preps hard exploring every angle, then throws it away, to act. It's still there. To stream research alive is at the heart of creativity, despite every story requiring a structual Hitchcockian McGuffin.

C.J.'s story of woe doesn't gain electrical bill assistance at the food pantry this week since he doesn't possess a cut-off notice.

Monthly meetings of a non-profit Board are monopolized by a budget review. This causes the eviction of a family at Christmas for non-payment of rent. It also precedes the sale of the house after the realization there's no way for a finance-driven non-profit to be a landlord.

For the first two weeks confronting a national disaster, when Government is otherwise baffled, stats tell the story. When the iconic Brainiac 5 (Final Crisis 6) proclaims, "I calculate we have exactly 72.4 seconds before time breaks down and this sentence becomes meaningless," it informs those same two weeks, after which, spin overtook the reality of math.

If you pledge the same and your income declines, is the end result a 10% tithe?

Aussie journalist, Richard Flanagan writes, "in the end, politics is not about focus groups and numbers, it is about the power of stories," to which Clive James responds, "though politics is indeed concerned with more than numbers, it can't do without them."

The story powering the Inaugruation is the performance of Pete Seeger knowing this investiture is the culmination of a life's work validating our generation's vision despite decades of factual investigative journalism to the contrary.

Carl Jung points out whenever we encounter an accident that changes our lives, we encounter God.

Buckner encounters Mookie. Mitch encounters Carter. Schultz encounters the Mick.

Sometimes the best you may achieve is via negativa, therefore, A-Rod proves the existence of clutch hitting.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Vendor No. 2

You could not find a better definition of the Speed Force theorem than Joe Kelly's (JLA 82) "infinite realm of velocity that feeds all motion in the universe: lumbering pirouette of planets; ricochet tango of sub-atomic particles; the racing of the human heart for love and fear - from this source springs all of the Flash's power."

In opposition, Philip K. Dick's Kipple Theory states all are naturally subject to entropy, clutter, disorder. For example, stricken by lyme disease, Clarence retires, succumbing to a critical dismishment of energy.

Atrocitus taunts the bound Sinestro (GL 36) "you believe fear to be the most powerful force in the universe? Fear is inaction. Fear is hiding away. Rage is action."

To which Sinestro sneers, "rage is uncontrollable."

We've spoken previously of balance: Russell Kirk adds, "for an order to live, both permanence and progress are necesary."

How?

Andrew O'Hagen describes Arthur Miller as "a sort-of-Marxist committed primarily to self-discovery and the ousting of Fascism."

Beyond politics, per se, we note, prior to an action, GL swears an Oath.

Sister Eileen prays the hours.

In contrast to Kelly, Dick, and Atrocitus, according to the Junction Model, discovered by Advanced Sedentary Physics (ASP) pioneer, Joseph P. Carson, elements naturally reside at rest, neither speeding forth, nor falling victim to entropy, thereby enabling the reinterpretatation of ancient journeys in managable dimensions, as follows:

James Madison, on his way to Princeton, in 1769, riding 30 to 40 miles a day, from Orange, to Fredericksburg, crossing the Rappahannock, and Aquia Creek, through Quantico, Dumfries, Colchester, over the Occoquan, by Stafford Court House, through Dumfries, past Pohick, to Georgetown and beyond.

The same irreducible principle applies in regards to tracing the route of Jackson-in-the-Valley utilizing contemporary Virginia road maps.

Passing the corner of Independence & 12th daily after work, a shortcut crosses a flower vendor luring commuters in need of a bouquet.

After Vendor No. 1, with whom I'd become familiar was arrested, I'd grown fond of Vendor No. 2.

When I told him, Tuesday, I would not be passing this way again, he began to tell long tales of retirement and how selling flowers passes the time.

I wanted to learn more but had to catch my train.

Friday, January 9, 2009

New Scrubs

In response to why the first two new episodes were 'serious,' creator Bill Lawrence replies, "I thought we got a little silly. In order for the finale to actually mean anything, the show has to be borderline real for people to give a s--t."

--one heckuva slipperly borderline, alright.

Bee Wilson tells, in the original 1880 story by Collodi, how when Cricket advises Pinocchio he'll never come to any good unless he buckles down and gets a job, the puppet grabs a wooden mallet and flings it so hard that "with his last breath, Cricket cried cree-cree-cree and then died on the spot, stuck to the wall."

Yipes.

Wouldn't you rather go, as Wilson continues, to where "becoming a real boy means being restored to the safe world of children in Gepetto's house rather than taking up responsibility and growing up as Pinocchio does at the end of Collodi's book?"

Or how about straddling both?

When we donned our Crackerjacks, standing in ranks for inspection, it was then that individualities surfaced rather than personalities categorized by fashion.

Dickens straddles as the young Scrooge exclaims while breaking up with Alice, "this is the even-handed dealing of the world. There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth."

Episcopalians straddle the Divine through liturgy enervated by the Holy Spirit.

Kurt Busiek's Morgaine strides in the opposite direction finally elaborating the overarching Trinity strategy, in 31, as "the Chaos Rifts are a manifestation of the world falling apart, because there is no real order, no real structure. It wants something - anything - to establish a hierarchy of rules, of command, of natural order. If we do that - through our dark arcana, our Pantheon, establishing our domain over reality - then we rule all. It's that simple."

--and what constituted in reality, the 'German idea of freedom,' - Freiheiten, per Jurgen Kocka, meaning the "freedom of corporate entities, self-administered towns, self-regulating guilds, aristocratic estates, and rulers of small territories, which is not antithetical to authorities but was compatible with subordination to them and with strong statist traditions."

---as if America evolved as a bureaucratic confederation of states under an Emperor lacking a mitigating national mythos of classic individualist republicanism.

John Ralston Saul concedes, in Voltaire's Bastards, "Marxism became the dreamlike answer to a real need in Western society but any one of a handful of other dreams might have done just as well. Walt Disney's, for example, riding in the front lines of mythology, converted America to a vision of itself in which the citizen is a viewer, the beliefs are cinematic assertions, and the leaders are character actors."

Exactly.

Magic Kingdom: Hall of Presidents.

--the slippery benign borderline which JD and I are driving over forwards and backwards all the time.