Since I've been working in Maine I've had all of two days off. In fact, I've been working much too often. I've about had it with Outback. But not dear old Sheila, she's been to 266 and counting. The Japaneese are just getting turned on to all the many implications of "No Rules, Just Right. Mate."
People order the Bloomin Onion more that anything else I think we have on our menu. At its core, people are paying $6.49 to dip fried breading in a mayonaise and horseradish base sauce. One Bloomin Onion, not to be confused with Chile's "Awesom Blossom" contains 2130 calories. That's 4 Big Macs. Eat up!
People always want to know what makes it taste so good. As if they can't believe that they just equalled the per capita caloric caloric intake of a single African. But I can't tell them. The Bloomin Onion's recipe is a secret. But this isn't precisely true.
But don't think that I'm that down on Outback. The Motley Fool is pretty up on it. It's a real cash cow!
In addition to vinyl records, another thing that has really caught my attention this summer is the propoganda poster, especially WWI. WWI to me is the most fascinating war that our country has ever fought in. To me it was a war that bridged two era's. Our propoganda poster's reflect this, they are one part patriotic fervor, another part suspicion of all things European. Plus they have an aesthetic that seems very relavent to me. Check out a nice collection of them here.
I found this little site. The Vickies seem a lot more prescient in their vision of the future than, say the "greatest generation" did coming of age in the 50s(remember all those horrible futuris commercials, where experts promised us that everyone would have their own automatice kitchen by 1992?)
I'm reading this guy named Richard Yates. His stuff is absolutely amazing. I bought a collection of his short stories, but for now I'm trying to finish his book Revolutionary Road. It's about a couple in their late 20s living in the 1950s. They kind of go through a mid-life crisis. The book speaks volumes about the potential we have to be something, and the web of obligations and misrelations ot others that more often than not defines who we actually turn out to be. The book is kind of a downer, but it speaks volumes to me. For your enjoyment here are two favorite selections.
“And he was gradually aware that she felt it too; there was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications. They stood that way for a long time.”
“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort….’I’m afraid I’m booked solid through the end of the month,’ says the executive, voluptuously nestling the phone at his cheek as he thumbs the leaves of his appointment calendar, and his mouth and eyes tat that moment betray a sense of deep security. The crisp, plentiful, day-sized pages before him prove that nothing unforeseen, no calamity of chance or fate can overtake him between now and the end of the month. Ruin and pestilence have been held at bay, and death itself will have to wait; he is booked solid.”
I finished reading Harry Potter by about 3:20 am Monday. I can't remember being this into a fantasy novel since I was 13, barely pubescent, and absolutely in love with the idea of Perrin Aybarra in the Wheel of Time. I'd say that I thought about Potter more over the past weekend than I slept.
Often times when authors take three years to write the next book in their series it is because they have no idea what to say. The new book is nothing like that. Honestly, I think Rowling took as long as she did just to make the hype/anticipation of its arrival that much more acute. I think this is the best one yet. Really.
As I was driving home tonight from work, studiously observing the speed limit, I thought about being younger. Up until the past year or so I would drive as fast as I could anywhere, especially the interstate. There was generally one exception to this speed racer phenomenon. Whenever I was driving about with a girl who I happened to like in tow I would always drive the speed limit.
This exceptional behavior was not due to me wanting to protect the mother of my chidlren. No that would be much too far-sighted. At the time I was very much focused on the here and now. With my love in tow I was content. Where else would I want to go. The present was just fine.
With this girl I was okay. My needs were being met. I wanted the moment to last as long as possible. So I was thinking about the Matt of the past tonight. And then I began to think about why I don't speed now. There isn't some imaginary girl friend that I carry around. At least I don't know of one...
Well anyway. I suspect that maybe I don't speed anymore because I don't feel the need to get to that next place/person/experience as desparately as I used to. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not becoming a space cadet. I still am task oriented, and into time management. I think that I'm speeding less because in day to day travel I'm more content with now. I'm not living in expectation.
I hope that this feeling is a sign of the fulfillment that I am finding in Jesus. Maine isn't that great.
So this morning I was doing my regular Saturday morning grocery shopping for the old Sether and I at the local Super Wal Mart. As I walked in the door, I saw a pallett ful of the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For those of you living under a rock the latest Harry Potter book came out on Friday, the last one since 2000.
Well anyway, there was this pallet full of stacks of the new book. They were only 16 bucks! This is almost half of the cover price. This book came out on Friday! In that one instant WalMart made a huge impression. I'd always read that Wal Mart is successful because I is so widespread that they can use their buying clout to force distributors to sell to them at a discount. Wal Mart then turns the discount right on down to the customer.
WalMart may be the only successful populist endeavor in our history. Think about it, in the last 150 years we've had quite a few populist movements. None of them have been successful on anything larger than a local scale. Wal Mart on the other hand has succeeded in being an orginization that goes to extreme lengths to save America money. It's amazing.
We have this Canon. It is in every AP Senior Lit class. There are books. And then there are Great Books. The Great Books are written by Great Authors like Dickens, Hemingway, and Joyce.
The other day I read in The Believer an articel by Tom Bissell about a lot of things. But his big point is that pop culture has to be taken seriously as reality. Reality is what you percieve it to be. The real is formed by our interraction with media. This is a three sentence summary of a 16 page article, so take it for what it is. Unfortunately the Bissell piece is not accessible from the web site.
So I googled Tom Bissell. I found this great article at Salon from over a year ago entitled I'd Prefer Not To. It's about the Great Books that Bissell doesn't like. Bissell is an editor for some hoitey toitey publisher, so his inability to read Faulkner and Austen is great.
What's even better are the letters to the editor. They are brutal. People call Bissell a lot of names. A few letters were happy with Bissell's honesty, but they were fewer and farther between. What I found especially interesting was that at it's heart, people's problem with Bissell's attitude is that Bissell unapoligetically looks at reading as a consumptive enterprise. We read to consume. Consumptive reading is irreverent and irreconcialable with any "higher" view of reading literature as an objective art form. Literature is only useful insofar and it helps you..
I find this idea interesting. Can we do otherwise than "merely" consume literature?
Do you remember the jive of the TMNT. It was this "bodacious," "radical," even "wicked" dialect of surfer talk. As an eight year old I liked this talk. My friends would refer to girls as "gnarly" and each other as "rad." I think Michealangelo, the prognosticator of cool, was the main culprit for this surfer vocabulary. M was also wont to use the great adjective "wicked". When confronted with a horde of the foot. M would often reply with the wonderfully descriptive term, "Wickedd!"
TMNT haven't been around in a while. They're high was probably in the second movie dancing with Vanilla Ice to the "Turtle Rap." Many of you may remember its unforgettable chorus, "Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go!" Well Vanilla Ice is out, and so are those lovable TMNT.
However apparently in Maine part of they're vernacular lives on. The term Wicked is used by all "Mainahs" age 35 and below. They never stopped living the TMNT life of martial arts and pizza consumption on an epic scale. At first this really alarmed me, but now I'm starting to become accustomed to the funny talk. My only fear is that I can feel the desire to call things "Wicked Good!" infiltrating my psyche. Pizza Time!
I'm really becoming addicted to vinyl. In the past 3 days i've probably spent upwards of $30 bucks on vinvyl records. I'm really comforted by the fact that vinyl is such an artifact. CD's are so souless, they are generic, and nearly ubitquitous. The only difference between my blank CDR and your New Radiohead is that I can't easily press the cool album art onto my CDR and have it look as good. Outside of that the two are basically identical. Sure, my CDR doesn't have radiohead songs on it right now, but it could in a few short minutes. CDs do nothing for me because their is no mystery in their production. An eight year old could make a cd that could sit on a rack at the Virgin Mega-store and look not out of place.
A vinyl LP is another matter all together. I have no idea how vinyl is pressed. I don't know anyone that could press vinyl for me either. Obviously not the same can be said of the cd. Every vinyl album is different. They're not identical because they're not digital, each has their own imperfections.
On Tuesday I bought Marvin Gaye's double LP "Live at the Palladium" I'll listen to it at least twice tomorrow. I almost bought the UK version of Elvis Costello's debut album but it was a bit to much. I love "Alison" enough that I'm sure it will find it's way into my collection before too long. I'm also on a quest to get all the ELO studio albums from the beginning to the early 80s. After that their sound loses relevance to me. Well I've just spent a lot of time writing about vinyl, but the funny thing is that I want to write more. I just love it that much!
The other day Aaron Mesh linked his blog Wired Mesh to an interview with Jack White of the White Stripes. This interview was part of the May 2003 print edition of The Believer.
Mesh's link to this magazine piqued my interest.
I go to Border's books almost every day before work for at least an hour. I had been eying the June copy of The Believer for a couple days now, but other things diverted my attention. Today I picked it up for the first time and I'm in love. I bought it at the relatively steep newstand price of $8 without bating an eye.
Without further ado I will give the top five for this gem.
(5) Every Issue has portraits of the four most "attractive" people dealt with in the issue. The portraits are done in a three color pattern, always black and white, but with a third color for additional shading. In the June issue, this shading is done with a light blue.
(4) There are no advertisements. Zero!
(3) One article begins with a relatively lengthy discussion of Baudrillard only to move into an equally long discussion about Joe Millionaire. Genius!
(2) The paper stock is thicker than any, I mean any, monthly publication I've ever seen outside of an academic journal.
(1) Included in this issue is a postcard of a work by an artist interviewed in the last issue. Usually those note-card inserts in a magazine are souless advertisements. Imagine the pure joy of seeing not commercialism but art falling into my lap as I opened the magazine for the first time!
I give you Darrell Sims, Alien Hunter. This guy is hilarious. I especially enjoyed reading the letters from friends that he had in the bio section
If Josh Rouse was wed to Modest Mouse who was recently separated from the Beta Band you would the new couple would be Canadian rock collective Broken Social Scene. In 2002 this band released their second album, You Forgot it in People. The album garnered a modest amount of success in Canada centering around their hometown of Toronto. The band ever won a "prestigious" Juno Award in early 2003.
But at the beginning of 2003 no one had heard of these guys in the States. Ryan Schrieber, the editor of Pitchfork Media made a New Years resolution to go through "boxes upon boxes" of promotional cds he gets sent in hopes of finding those diamonds in the rough. In that often futile effort Schreiber found ths BSS album. On February 3rd, 2003, Schreiber published this review.
It was so enthusiastic that it generated a buzz strong enough to sell out the small Canadian label completely out of the first printing. The Canadian label put out a larger run for the states that has since sold out. I tried to find the album twice at record stored with no success during this print run.
Finally, Mercury records has signed as distribution deal with BSS. On top of that BSS has a video on MTV2. BSS has a degree of buzz that is approaching a fever pitch.
I almost bought the album twice online. Both times I wavered and the the album sold out. Today I purchased it. It lives up to the hype. The earlier matrimonial description does BSS justice. They are that good. This is the best rock album we will see this year. Enough said.
The Weblog Boing Boing has an entry up today about the role of Text Messaging in spreading awareness about SARS in the early days of the outbreak. In case you didn't remember, when new of the first couple cases in Beijing broke China's government characteristically denied as much as they could. Only when people connected to the early cases of the virus spread the word grass roots style through their cell phone networks, did the government fess up. In a token to the outraged west, the upper level beauracracy sacked some of the lower level beauracracy. Now the Chineese government is arresting citizens for using text messaging to spread information about the virus. Information that the government is calling "seditious rumor". A great example of the use of the cell phone at generating social networks that could not exist otherwise.
So I woke up at like 6:30 this morning. I called my Dad, intending to tell him happy fathers day. Instead we talked for a bit about Nick Hornby's book, How to
Be Good. I forgot to tell him the code words, and so I failed there. So dear, dad, "Happy Father's Day"
On Father's day Outback opens at 11:00. I got out of church at like 11:05, huffed it over the the restaraunt and by 11:30 was waiting tables. Sometime in the mid afternoon a middle aged man and his two sons were seated in my seciton. I went through the usual blah blah blah. He was kind of aloof and distant. His children seemed kind of on edge. One of them had obviously just been crying. The man's significant other was conspicuously absent, speaking of a likekly separation.
Things were moderately tense for a while and then he just snapped. I don't know why. I'm not sure he really does either. One moment things are fine, Hooly Dooly really, and then the man goes into this existentialist rant about the large chain steakhouse industry.
"All these places are the same. The same food, just with different names on the menu. I hate Outback! I'm never coming here again."
The French may love food, but apparently distraut existentialists of all stripes hate Outback and its existential malaise.
The man continued to diatribe. Tired of attacking the old Outback. This fine gentlemen turned to me. He described my service as somewhat rude. To convey this he characterized my behavior as a monkey's. I thought his description inspiring. The man ate his food, payed and left. I don't think I'll ever see him again.
Oh the Outback. This place tears me down on a daily basis. I have worked 8 out of the past 9 days. I have at least three if not six more in a row ahead of me. This work schedule has not allowed me to post a record of this trip in Maine due to the fact that much of my time is spent in the "No Worries" zone.
But there is a light at the end of my working tunnel. A week from this monday, if all goes well, I will be in Boston watching Wilco. That is my eye of the tiger.
Read an article at Wired today about Microsofts plan for making the OS's even more vital for the functioning of the free world. Also I finished Tomorrow Now, the Sterling book I was talking about.
These two pieces inspired me with an half-cracked idea.
We need to have ubiquitous broadband internet access offered as a public utility/work.
It seems that the media publishing industriy notably the RIAA and MPAA really only care about making sure that their chosen methods of media delivery are profitable. Due to some technological advances (namely file sharing) these information delivery methods (cds and dvds) are really set up for success.
These industries are looking at ways to alter the product itself in order to allow for the delivery systems continuing financial viability. This does not bode well for the average joe schmoe consumer. Joe buys 4 dvds and 3 cds a week from Best Buy. He likes to put the cds on his laptop so he can listen to them in his house while leaving the original cd in the car for the road. If the RIAA has to, it will make this very legal, very legitimate, longstanding ability of the consumer impossible. In order to prevent illegal sharing of products, media corporations are willing to alter products in such a way that they are only usuable as a viewable device, that is I can't copy the cd or dvd from anywhere to anything.
This solution of product alteration in support of delivery distribution systems has two major problems with it. (As far as I can see). (1), their is the issue of constitutionality. It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would reverse a longstanding tradition of private "fair-use" duplication. However, for these media companies to work it has to be all or nothing so (2) any significant exception to duplication proofing products undermines any duplication proofing because copies will begin to float around.
For a long time media distributors have been trying to get ISP's to police illegal use of the ISP's customers. In a recent Verizon case, the RIAA has gotten a court order for Verizon to release the names of some big illegal file traders. This mugging of ISPs won't really work for two reasons. First, it sets a precedent that could undermine all ISP's financial viability. Second, the RIAA and co. can only get the identities of people trading on centralized software like Kazaa. Decentralized networks like DC and such are basically impossible for the RIAA to touch. Private ISP's are simply to large to police their users in a watchdog way.
At this point we still have a media industry that has no realistic way to deliver media at a profit. Pay for play services like Pressplay and Apple's new offering still are inherently flawed. There is no real reason to think that individual users will pay for something that they can get for free. Except for their own individual consciences, nothing encourages them to pay $.99 for a song that they could get for free.
So what we need is some system that can police individual users for illegal activities in order to ensure that record and movie companies can still make money. Granted, many of us, (myself included) don't think that the record companies do all that much. But at this point I'm more concerned with the movie industry. Many people say that bands can make it fine w/o major labels. But filmmakers really do still need the status quo to make their jobs feasable. We are fast approaching a moment were connections will speed up to the point that movies will be realatively painless to download.
So we want to continue using these industries out of a desire to ensure their continued output of their product (Hollywood/movies). To do this someone has to make sure that individuals are not illegally sharing stuff. We can't have a company do this because no one really wants a company looking into our lives that closely. And two, because a company would probably have to be big to make a profit, it would be too big to be able to police individual users.
Here's my idea. Media delivery companies would pay municipal govts sizeable portions of the money needed to operate internet access like a utility within local municipalities. The consumer is happy, because they get cheap, fast internet access and continued fair-use right to duplicate cds and dvds they buy. The record and movie industries give out hundreds of millions a year to cities and towns to police their internet access and pay for up to date hardware. WiFi access could be free anywhere outdoors while residents and businesses could pay for bandwidth like they paid for electricity, gas, and water. The consumer's privacy would be protected as much as possible through a public company than a private.
Well if anyone is still reading at this point, I'd like to know what yall think.
After our hijinks in wascassett yesterday, Seth and I weren't quite ready to go out on another bizaare exploration. Our next one of those is when we visit a 19th century mansion who's only current occupant is a Buddha stolen from a temple in China during the 19th century. But more on that on friday.
The name Kennebunkport may sound rather familiar to you. That would be because Kennebunkport is the summer home of George Bush Sr. Kennebunkport had some of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. Seth and I looked at literally block after block of sprawling New England colonials. It was amazing. And then there was Dock Square
I think the platonic form of tackiness will be dock square. I wonder how people who have the means to live in houses worth 10s of millions of dollars can abide a cultural black hole like Dock Square. This place disgusted me. There was an alternating pattern of well decorated t-shirt shops and "seaside home-decor" for two whole blocks. The crown by far was the licensed Thomas Kinkade dealer we saw. As Seth and I entered his shop the man demonstrated "Thomas Kinkade: illuminator" for us. He took us to one of his prints and turned the lights on it down, showing us how Kinkade "masterfully" used glazes to preserve the "light" even in dim light. That just great, a sappy, tacky, Christian Contemporary painting that can double as a nightlight for your small children. How about that Thomas Kinkade painter of light!
I kind of left Kennebunkport in a melancholy. I had much higher expectations of Kennebunkport. On the way out we spent a couple hours in the worlds oldest largest trolley museum, the Seashore Trolley Museum. The museum has dozens of complete trolley cars that they are in the process of restoring. Apparently trolley systems were the dominant for of inter-urban transportation in New England for the first 20 years of the 20th century. Seeing the importance of trolley cars to New England turned my mind away from the utter crapiness that was Kinkadebunkpoop and towards history, something much dearer to my heart.
So on Monday afternoon I was in Borders books next door to Outback before my shift. I stumbled upon Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations . This book immediately piqued my interest. I started flipping through it. The places the book discribed were absolutely incredible, things like a three story outhouse to a Masonic lodge, the Tom Thumb memorial museum, the worlds largest umbrella slip cover museum, things like that. I bought the book immediately.
After work that night I began going through the Maine entries. Large towns like Portland, Augusta and Bangor only had two or three entries a piece. I was kind of disapointed. And then I stumbled onto Wiscassett, Maine. Wiscassett Maine is only probably a village of about 1500 people tops. And there is this book of curious weird stuff were 4 entries, more than any other place in all of Maine.
Wiscassett has many things to boast about. An eccentric antique dealer named Terry Lewis had a middle kingdom Egyptian mummy on display in his shops foyer. This mummy has been the subject of considerably controversy in the past years as the mummy has threatened to leave Mr. Lewis's possession.
Beyond the 4000 year old mummy small Wiscassett Maine had several other dubious bragging rights. Wiscassett holds claim to the largest single collection of pre-electrical mechanical music making devices. THis sounds strange, and believe me it is bizaare. Thirdly, the quaint picturesque town of Wiscassett can claim to have the best preserved collection of jail grafitti dating from two centuries ago on in the entire Atlantic seaboard.
At this point in the reading of this book I was two parts excited and one part disturbed. How do towns come to be like this? I've read every horror story that HP Lovecraft ever wrote, and almost every one of them is set in fictional New England towns just like this.
So tuesday morning Seth and I set out on this expedition. Wiscassett was a little over an hour away. We got there by 10:30 after a brief stop at a roadside antique shop. When we got to Terry Lewis's Antique store I noticed two things. First, there was the amazing amount of clutter in the front yard. It resembled more of an excretion of rusted nautica than anything else. Second thier was a single board nailed across the front door frame where someone had splintered the frame trying to force the dead bolt. On that conspicuous board was a not informing Seth and I that Terry Lewis had been injured "overseas" over the winter and wwould open the shop hopefully in May. Two things. For one it's well into June and for another what is a man that has been fighting with the Egyptian Government and US customs over his right to own this mummy doing overseas? I have no idea. A lady next door to Mr. Lewis' shop informed me that she hasn't seen hide nor hair of Mr Lewis.
We spent the next couple hours shopping at some other antique shops were i got some very cool stuff. After lunch Seth and I decided to brave the Musical Wonder House in all its glory.
As we walked into the building we were greeted by these wall to wall music machines. Most of these being some type of faux-furniture pieces (grandfather clocks, china hutches, dressers, tables, etc) They all looked very old. We checked out this admissions plaque. To tour the "hallway" was $2, the "half basement" was $8, the "full basement" was $20, and the grand, guided, "Whole house tour" was $30. I will never pay $30 for this tour but not because of the price (which is ridiculous) but because it would mean looking at wall to wall "muscial wonders" (which is frightening).
As Seth and I were bemusedly looking at this price list a man anywhere from 80 to 120 year of age shuffled towards us with the help of his cain. He was Russian. His name is Danilo Konvalinka. Seth said we'll take two of the two dollar tours. He took our four dollars and carefully punched two "admit one" tickets and handed them to us. Seth asked old Danilo where the "hallway" was, he replied, "you're eeein it."
Making the most of our 2 dollars we began to closely examine the music machines. Most of them were from around the turn of the last century. With the help of a quarter the machines would play about 30 second of famous symhonies and popular songs from 150 years ago on bells that sounded vaguely like the toy xylophone we used to play with in nursery at church.
I began to notice that alongside these music machines pictures adorned the wall of Danilo and his eastern European family.We see Danilo in all the stages of late middle to old age of the last 40 years of his life. We see Danilo with his sons, the body doubles for the 1980 USSR gymnastics team. We even get to see Danilo with his long departed, fondly remebered wife.
It turns out that Donilo has been running his musical wonder house for well over 40 years now.
WHAT IS UP WITH THIS TOWN?
How can two people such as Terry Lewis: International Man of Mystery and Danilo Konvalinka the mystical music man live in a town of 1500? What is Wiscassett?
this past week has been restful yet disappointing. i have been trying several times a day, for the past 6 days to procure a copy of the demo for Big Mutha Truckers. This game will rock...rednecks racing 18 wheelers...what more could one ask for?
the problem: the demo is 148mb, far too large for Matt's modem to handle.
the solution: the library down the street from the house has broadband.
the next problem: the demo is 148mb; its tough to transport from the library to
Matt's computer.
the solution: two zip disks and a file splitter.
the final problem: since ive been hogging the internet conection at the library for hours a day, the library staff decided to restrict me to a mere 30 minutes per visit. this is not enough time to download and copy the demo to zip disks.
the solution: there is no solution to this problem. i give up.
the more i read of the Brother's Karamazov, the more dig it.
Often times in the south Rednecks are the continual cannon fodder for derision and snobery and even times pity. This is especially true among the service industry class in the south. I FEAR the redneck, armed with NASCAR hat, Dale Earnhardt memorial skoal can, family of four, and weekly paycheck. In Birmingham I could always expect four things with a fair degree of certainty from these folk.
1) A southern drawl combined with a vernacular that made conversation difficult at best.
2) A penchant for ordering nice steaks cooked burnt and lots of light beer, in a bottle mind you, incurring a high tab, and thereby assuring a tip somewhere in the neighborhood of6 6-8%.
3) The ability to consume an urn of sweet tea faster than you or I could drink a glass of water.
4) Rude children, bad manners (I once had a man eat his steak with meat in one hand and bottle of Heins 57 in the other), and general hositility to anyone without a Southern accent (me).
In case you didn't know, rednecks are everywhere. Even in our northern most contingous state. But don't worry this is not a post of bitter despondency. I'm really excited right now.
Last night I realized as I was waiting on some Mainean rednecks two things. First, there is no sweet tea in Maine. In order to sweeten your tea you have to go to considerable personal lengths to sweeten it with sugar packets. The redneck up here will not due that. In Maine rednecks don't guzzle anything.
Furthermore no rednecks in Maine have Southern accents. They do have extreme JFK accents. But this is okay, I can understand that fine and of course my Atlantic seaboard drawl is perfectly intelligible to them as well.
So with all the tallying done. Maine rednecks are half as tedious and Bamer rednecks. While I still won't make any money off of them, and they will still be rude. Things in general are looking a lot better in Maine. I love this state!
AN ADDENDUM
I would like to clarify my remarks about Matrix Reloaded a bit. I’m not condoning the sex scene of the movie as being good, holy, pure, or above reproach. That scene was written, directed, shot, and starred in by people who I seriously doubt are saved. In that light nothing that they can do is righteous. If I were a Wachiowski brother and I shot that scene, as a Christian, I would have not made it nearly as explicit as it was. My post meant to merely take note of the care in which the directors of the picture took to portray the humanity of Neo and Trinity's relationship. I think that the Wachiowski bros showed us in the first movie that love was necessary to triumph. In the second they were showing that this love needed to be human, full of all those emotions, especially sexual ones, in order to triumph. To all this may concern, I hope you can rest easy.
Well I just watched Matrix Reloaded at the Drive-in. That was very cool. Seeing it for a second time focused a thought. I think the techno-house literally heart-throbbing sex scene may be the most important in the movie.
Before the sex scene the relationship between Trinity and Neo seemed almost platonic. As if there was an intense amount of emotional attachment involved, but without the sex scene the movie becomes a story about people who lower themselves to machine-like emotions in order to beat down on the machines. That's not terribly fulfilling. But with the sex, we see that the whole becoming machine-like is justified in the character's minds by the opportunity to "love" each other.
Another thing, while in the matrix, Neo only took off his glasses once, that was after rescuing Trinity from her self-induced death spiral. If I remember correctly you don't even see him take them off. The sunglasses just come off due to the emotional force called love that is about to carry Trinity through her darkest hour.
Well everything with jobs worked out. I got work at Outback as a server as often as I want it. This wasn't a big surprise. But even better Seth got hired by the Outback as a dishwasher at a whopping 9 an hour. This is great stuff. Both of us start tomorrow too. I really didn't want to work at Outback in B'ham this summer but the prospect of working in Outback in Maine is somewhat appealing. The work will be familiar and easy but the context will be a breathe of fresh air. So that's really good stuff.
On top of that, I'm going to see the Matrix tonight at a drive-in. That's right a drive in.
Well peace for now
In our seemingly never-ending quest to be gainfully employed we have a meeting with the proprietor of the Outback today. On the phone she seemed to take it for granted that she has something for me. The big question is Seth. She didn't seem to high on him, but we'll see. The interview's at 1:30 PM so pray it goes well for Seth especially.
In other news, today I visited my uncle Chris' studio. He makes cool bowl sculture things. He calls them "deconstructions." I think his stuff is cool, so check it out here .
Well like Seth I didn't do very much today besides read stuff. I read William Gibson's new book Pattern Recognition. It's a departure from his normal Cyberpunk oevre but only in the sense that its not set in the immediate future in favor of a time roughly the same as our own. The books good and I'd recommend it to anyone that enjoys good literature. Enough of a review.
The characters in the book are all what count as the cutting edge of what we would call being "wired" they have cell phones, i-macs, broadband everything, and slick jobs. A large part of their life exists on the internet. The plot of the book is moved along by their investigation of a series of artisitically exceptional short video feeds that someone releases on the internet anonymously.
Gibson sort of out of hand notes the lack of materialism of these cutting edge people. They don't care about have much stuff because all the important "things" exist on the net.
As more and more of our life centers around abstractions anchored by ones and zeroes it needs to be asked in what sense are we no longer materialistic. There is very little out there that we can possess that is digitial (Everquest "Sword of Mystical Impotence Slaying" aside). However while it is encouraging to imagine a world without Cadillacs and built in gas grilles, to breath easier because of the digital revolution would miss the point. While our parents may have lusted after possessing things, it could be just as harmful as lusting after understanding.
so far, the maine adventure has been pure relaxation. neither matt nor i have been able to locate jobs yet; so we eat and sleep and read all day. in the last twenty four hours, ive had two boxes of kraft cheesie mac...and i dont plan on slowing down. the brother's karamazov is a dense book.
There's a great article on Salon in the life section about money and young couples. Many young couples got together during the dot.com boom. Money was plentiful because jobs were easy to land. But now many couples don't have enough money to get married or even pay the rent.
My dad has always said that money is what causes most of the couples to come to him for marital counseling. This article is interesting to me because all that sustains the couples in the article is a hope that times will get better. The article tacitly admits that the couples are uniting by money! Incredible!
I live in a Norman Rockwell painting. I sleep in a little bedroom in a little Cape Cod in a little town called Saco Maine. Across the street their is a one, that's right one, little league baseball field that rountinely fills with 8 years olds at dusk. This is America, at least the America that has been fed to us for our whole lives. I'm a suburban kid. I grew up in a world of working professionals two parents, two car garages, and two children, lots 2/3 of an acre. No sidewalks. Our little league games were 5 minutes car ride away in out parents minivan. I didn't ride my bike to even my friends house, much less my pee wee sporting events. This beautiful beautiful, this wonderful state. I have fallen in love with this state, this place.
But sappiness aside. I really find this place peaceful. I'm finding a lot of happiness here in spite of the fact that I have no job. The job that we had lined up fell through. Seth and I are now a couple of weeks behind the curve in the job hunt. Most of the college kids here have been looking for jobs for a solid 2 weeks before we set foot here. Our promising leads include. 1) Working the "third shift" at Dunkin Donuts. "Third shift" is a euphemism for the all night shift at DK. If hired Seth and I would work the donut counter from 10PM to 6AM Monday through Friday. 2) Even though I came up here to escape Outback I may be working at the one in Portland. I'll find out about that on Saturday. 3) There is always the Sierra Club. If Seth and I completely "misplace" our consciences we can make "$300-$500" going door to door selling Sierra Club memberships to gullible Liberal Mainean housewives. Yippee! Well those are the big choices, I'm partial to DK.