Track Number Eight April 23, 2006
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There isn’t a whole lot of discovery anymore. Amerigo Vespucci and Magellan and the Banana Boat guy are relics of a past where we didn’t know where everything was, how the world looked exactly down to the smallest detail. To illustrate how far we’ve come, I will now look at the hospital in which I was born online in a satelite snapshot from space. Put that in your Santa Maria and smoke it.
As a conossieur of Pearl Jam, 20% of my total iPod is dedicated to the works of Seattle’s finest. Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 90s (or all time), ‘Ten’ boasts a top six lineup that includes Once, Alive, Why Go, Jeremy, Evenflow and Black. That lineup is a 30 foot J right in Eagle Eye Cherry’s eye. But amidst all that mastery, a diamond was left unturned.
Listening to my iPod over the weekend (which, as many of you know, is now a big Shuffle, since I can’t pick songs anymore or change the volume), I was met with, “What the fuck is this world / Running to? You didn’t / Leave a message, at least / I coulda heard your voice one last time.” Porch. Track 8. On ‘Ten.’
I had heard it a thousand times, I must have, but since I hardly ever ventured past Oceans (a decent, but not great track number 7), I didn’t get a chance to hear it. I listened to Porch a thousand times, but didn’t hear it, if you follow. Running out on the lakefront, I discovered something that had always been there, but I’d never noticed. And it might be the best song on the album.
No one will ever again stumble upon a continent, or find a lost tribe, or fall into a temple complete with booby traps and the Cross of Coronado (to my chagrin). But much can be found out there. When the shackles are on, when it’s go to work, eat three meals a day, retire and get a nice watch, and then sit around in Florida to run out the clock, you don’t get to see what’s actually possible. Insert Robert Frost allusion here; the phrase “you have to” does not exist and is entirely in your mind. If you already know how the story’s going to go, why the hell would you read it? Tear a few pages out and see what happens.
Whim Week is being extended indefinetly.
Experiment: Welcome to the Week April 13, 2006
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From the people who brought you Bold Statement Sunday, Profanity Tuesday, and Underrated/Overrated Day comes an actual social experiment. The rest of these endeavors have had little impact outside of the people playing the game. This one could result in a number of terrible outcomes for both the participant and the rest of the population of the human race, or at least those in the vicinity of Chicago.
Whim Week.
A bit of backstory. In high school, an English/Math teacher with a brief tenure made a significant impact on the student body by posting the word “WHIM” over his door. When asked what exactly it meant, he responded with a request for an essay detailing what the student took it to mean. My analysis was that is was about not giving in to overthinking, not walking a careful line, not having a problem with saying, “What the fuck.”
We’ll see if this can last a whole week, but whatever. The idea is that over the course of Whim Week, there will not be a single moment of deciding whether an outcome I choose is correct. I’m going to do everything on a whim. I might go bankrupt, I might end up in prison. But either way or anywhere in between, there will be a story of some kind.
I’ve been reading up on Malcolm Gladwell and his sort-of scientific study, “Blink”, and I really want to know if it is a good thing or a bad thing to just act and react. We’re about to find out.
Whim. Here it goes.
Devolution in the Dark April 10, 2006
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Not with a bang, but with a whimper is the way T.S. Eliot’s world ends. A common interpretation is that civilization will cease to exist once people lose faith in it, and in all honesty, how can a rational human being be expected to maintain a solid loyalty to it during a power outage?
There are very few wakeup calls quite like a blackout. We are certain of our autonomy, our independence, our ability to exist on an island with nothing more than our wits and maybe a monkey in a pirate costume. We like to think of ourselves as intellectuals who do read, and choose intelligent stuff by authors who include their middle initials in their professional names. But the second the power goes out, we sit in the dark, wondering if it really is a full blown outage or just a prolonged flicker.
Like the stages of grief, you sit in your apartment, sometimes on the floor, because you no longer have the luxury of lights and figure you might as well go the whole way on the devolution train. You are tired, and would be asleep if the power worked, but since the lights are off without your consent, sleep becomes an impossibility. Anger is the first, and shortest, step of grief, and basically arrives in the form of a string of random obscenities indiscriminately spewed about concerning the reliability of the electric company.
Denial is the next step, as you try to act like it’s not that big a deal the power’s out. You decide to prop up a flashlight and read, like they used to back in the Gilded Age, but you can’t find the one flashlight you own and don’t have any candles. You turn on all four burners on your gas stove, wondering if the light generated is bright enough to let you see the pages if you read in the kitchen, and if that benefit outweighs the remarkable danger that a potential gas explosion presents.
Next comes depression. You’re lying on the ground now, actively considering falling asleep right there. After seeing Samara from The Ring a few hundred times in the darkness, you wander outside to the civilized world. It’s like going through a time machine, watching the life of convenience you used to take for granted pass you by in the form of busses and late night taco stands. Dejected, you go back into the crypt that used to be your building.
Then bargaining. You begin cataloging the number of things for which you are dependent on electricity, sorting out which ones are really all that necessary and which ones you could do without. After all, if you learn to live without it, you might be better adjusted for the next time this happens. Plus, this is clearly happening to you because of some sort of electronic karma, and if you cut down on the HBO, this won’t happen again.
Finally, the acceptance phase. This usually only arrives if the blackout is more widespread. You come to the conclusion that the power will never come back and you just will have to learn to live this way. Banding together a small group, you plan militaristic missions to the grocery store to feed the entire clan. Your official playbook becomes Lord of the Flies, which you re-read around hour four of the blackout. Many would call this an overreaction, but during the Hurricane Isabel situation of ‘03, the world was essentially Night of the Living Dead, and in 2502, four reasonably intelligent people sat with ties around their heads reenacting Charlie Steiner’s “Follow me! Follow me to freedom!”
Is this really the end? Are we really that dependent on electricity and artificial stimuli? Kick the Can was good enough for our parents; they’d kick that little bastard around for hours having a grand old time. Would we have to find a way to entertain ourselves like that again? Is civilization nothing more than a gigantic Las Vegas neon sign blinding us from seeing that we’re nothing more than helpless animals plugged in to a network that could fall at any time? Like that – foom! – enlightenment…sartori.
Then the lights go back on, as if the Gods of Light were waiting like Herb Brooks for the correct answer. And after all that philosophizing, the first question that runs through your mind: “I wonder if The Sopranos is available OnDemand yet…”
Six Months April 3, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Chicago.add a comment
Blinded by a college-throwback-style weekend bender and the staggering immersion that is 36 holes of Golden Tee, I completely forgot to officially recognize this previous passing Saturday as my six month mark in Chicago. I was very conscious of it on Thursday, but my consciousness dwindled to the point of being unable to operate any sort of machinery on Sunday morning. I was so entrenched in the self-inflicted malaise that attempting to reset my clocks for Daylight Savings Time turned out to be as trying as disarming a nuclear weapon on an inverted submarine without a scuba tank (something with which, as you know, I have exhaustive experience).
This isn’t going to be a recap of what’s been going on, because a whole lot has, and to try to cram the experience into a Mighty Dog can of a posting would be impossible. Rather than try to describe the trip, I’m going to describe the train-car, the tracks, and the shepherd’s daughter Snidely Whiplash has tied to the tracks. Why not.
My first point of contention is renting. It’s probably the biggest and most widely accepted waste of cash this side of Ronco (although that conglomerate is quickly getting outgunned by extreme diet pills; so the top standings, for those keeping score at home, are 1. Extreme Diet Pills, 2. JG Wentworth, 3. The Ab Shocker, 4. Ronco, 5. Chuck Norris’s Workout Machine). Zero long term benefit, substantial repeated costs, especially if you live alone. Plus, you have a number of reminders on a daily basis that you do not own the place in which you live. These include situations as routine as hot water not working and the heat clicking on when it’s 60 out. My personal favorite happened this past weekend, where I found a note mentioning the maintinence guy had been in my apartment, but it didn’t say what he did. There was a single gigantic footprint in my entranceway, and that was it. It could be that the maintinence guy opened the door, stepped in the apartment, and then left. It’s not my place. At all. I’m basically crashing on someone’s couch and paying them a ton of cash to do so.
The million dollar question, therefore, will be whether I can manage to buy something out here when my lease runs out in October. It could be possible, but would also designate a long-term commitment; like three to four years. I’m only halfway into this lease, I can figure that action out later.
Meanwhile, the punishment that one day of “Spring Forward” daylight savings time provides is made up by the fact that it’s not pitch-midnight-black outside when I leave work. That does wonders for avoiding the kind of Corporate Conglomerate Depression that staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day can provide.
To be continued…
NOTE: Ann Coulter has been officially charged with voter fraud, having knowingly registered in the wrong county in Florida. 20-1 says she blames it on immigration.
