Careered -vs- Careened

I had no idea. I must say that I am absolutely shocked my core.

Technorati Tags: Careen, Career, Editing, Editrix

Thunderstorms

(Haku has left for Iceland. He cannot possibly criticize me from there. Hence, a romantic view of rain.)

I sleep best in the middle of rainstorms. I always have. They make for, quite possibly, the perfect sleeping weather. It is so rhythmic.

Unfortunately, this runs up against the realities of summer nights in West Virginia, which are cold, as well as the need to make sure that everybody else is comfortable. I like the air to be cold so that I am all the warmer under the blankets, so sleeping with the windows open late into the autumn, and starting again early in the spring, is no problem. I produce incredible amounts of body heat or so I’m told. But that body heat plus summer temperatures plus open windows to listen to the rain don’t really work. Either I’m hot because of the temperatures and or I want the air conditioning on, which means I can’t have the windows open. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Enter those weather CDs that lame adults buy. Or, yknow, “acquire.” I have become my worst nightmare, having “acquired” some audio of thunderstorms. I am listening to it now, and have been for the last half hour. It is fantastically calming. This is good, because my newborn son was being a bit of a jerk all night. Disinterested in laying down, sitting up, eating food, not eating food, taking a binkie, not taking a binkie, he was basically impossible to please and cranky as a result. Not good times.

Newborns, as I mentioned in my last podcast, and perhaps in some recent posting, are fantastically overrated little creatures, because they don’t do anything. They sleep, and when they wake up they cry because they want to eat or be changed, and then they repeat that cycle all day long. I understand the appeal of little babies - mine definitely is adorable, cute, and tiny - but in practice, they need some improvements. Those improvements happen as they age, because once they begin to interact with the world around them is the time at which they become interesting. They actually do something. So note to the boykid: get growing dammit!

Meanwhile, the feeling of relaxation that I derive from this recording of thunderstorms is immaculate, which means that whatever was left of my childhood has now probably evaporated. Between the two kids and the CDs of thunderstorms, my youth is over, and the boykid is probably laying in bed now, sorrowfully, thinking, “My god, my father isn’t cool now. How awful will be when I’m a teenager?”

Where I Write About Photography…

This is the sort of post that I write late at night, ostensibly about the above photograph, although who knows if I end up there. It’s also the sort of thing that my obsessive commenter Haku will certainly not appreciate. I anticipate something along the lines of, “This sucks, you’re boring.”

A few times, I have taken photographs and thought to myself, “That’s a good one.” Good is defined, in this case, as a photograph that satisfies my own vague aesthetic sensibilities, and if you think it’s ridiculous for me to suggest that I have aesthetic sensibilities, you’re correct. However, I like the fact that the subject of the image - Billy Matheny and his band - are not dead-centered. I like the dead space around them. I like that they were talking to one another and not concerning themselves with me in the slightest. I like that this was an image of a band, in a bar, enjoying a drink. To me, it is honest photography.

I realize that claim sounds ridiculous, but I strive to capture real images, whatever that means. “But Sam!” You’re rightly exclaiming, before asking, “Didn’t you alter the image in photoshop?” It’s true. I opened it up and stripped out the color. Black and white is the cheap way to make a regular photograph appear important. Allegedly. For whatever this is worth, I liked the photograph in color, but like it more in black and white. And as this is my site and my bandwidth, that’s going to be quite enough criticism of my photoshopping.

I took these photographs because I was asked to. Matheny and his band need new images for their promotional materials, and because everybody else on Earth was booked, he called me. I don’t know the first thing about taking pictures of people, or bands, or anything else. Still, he trusted me, and I think we’ll end with a serviceable image as a result of our work together, at least until Annie Liebovitz is photographing him for the front cover of Rolling Stone or Spin or whatever music magazine is important these days.

Speaking of music, I’ve been obsessively listening to a single featuring Dwight “Tight Jeans” Yoakam and Ralph Stanley. The song - “Down Where The River Bends” - is fantastic, a simple song about a man going to war and wanting to be with his woman instead. However, I have to admit that no matter how hard I try to force myself to like this sort of roots music, I just can’t do it. I like songs, for sure, but I can live without the genre as a whole. I can live without most genres as a whole. Hip-hop, country, electronica, metal, whatever. For some reason, I’ve struggled mightily to attach myself to any single genre, which means I barely know anything about particular music history. Instead, I can make killer mixed-CDs which is a worthless skill that won’t get me anywhere, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

There’s something beautiful and haunting about roots music. (Is roots music even a term, or am I just making stuff up because it sounds good?) But at the end of the day, it’s sad and serious, and I don’t need anything more sad or serious in my life. There’s enough of that in the world. I listen to music because I want to escape into it, not look in a mirror. I think this makes me a failure as a music fan. I’d rather sing with my daughter in the car- what can I say?

So there you have it: I liked the above photograph, Billy Matheny is super talented, and I don’t know anything about music. Haku, set upon me with the dogs of criticism.

Nerding Out

I like The Onion’s AV Club. I’ve been a fan since I first realized that the satirical news magazine was doing serious reviews, interviews, and giving Dan Savage a place to publish. That said, it is a publication that has the tendency to really condescend beyond all reason to its readership.

Today’s The Knights Who Say “Nerd”: 20 Pop-Cultural Obsessions Even Geekier Than Monty Python is just ugly. There’s no merit to it, because nowhere do the authors indicate that they themselves might share in some of this fandom; it reads instead as if the hipsters are just making fun of the nerds in an attempt to feel better about their own cultural obsessions. And yes, these are people that are culturally obsessed.

It takes genuine cajones to believe that spending all of your available income on the latest European release of a Modest Mouse EP before heading over to your friend’s house for a Fassbinder Film Festival is somehow better than dressing up like your favorite anime character. Hipsters, of course, do prioritize the world this way, believing that their own obsessions are somehow superior to everybody else’s and using that idea to condescend to everybody around them. “Oh, really? Frank Zappa? Thanks, but no thanks. Rilo Kiley’s the thing now.” (Or, you know, whatever band is the thing now. I have no idea. I still think They Might Be Giants are fantastic.)

In the movie “The Apostle” with Robert Duvall, he is walking over a bridge in Louisiana when he sees Catholics celebrating a Christian holiday. Himself a Pentecostal minister, he watches for a few minutes. “You do things your way, and I’ll do them mine.” He says, laughing to himself, because while he isn’t a Catholic, he understands that ultimately, they’re both praying to the same god.

The hipsters at The Onion’s AV Club could take a lesson from that. Hipsterism isn’t in any way superior to the sort of nerdish behavior decried in the article above; rather, it is precisely the same sort of behavior focused on (barely) different pursuits. Acting as if the other is true is both offensive and shockingly dense. (One wonders if they have any idea what kind of people are reading and enjoying The Onion itself?)

An Art Show! And New Hampshire…

-First things first - an art show I put together is going up in three weeks. The flyer is above. It will feature local and semi-local artists exploring the topic of love, although not necessarily in that Hallmarkian light. Think of the other things that go along with love - constant frustration, sadness, anger, lunacy - and figure that at least some of those will be included.

Be there! February 1, 8-11pm, Wild Zero Studios, 229 Pleasant Street, Morgantown, West Virginia.

-Sadly, we need to briefly discuss Barrack Obama’s loss in New Hampshire yesterday which would have been, until about a week ago, considered an enormous victory. Here was Hillary Clinton, the establishment’s candidate, who should have been romping and stomping through New Hampshire. Obama wasn’t an afterthought, but it was looking like he’d come in second place. Then he won Iowa, and people starting wondering if he could win New Hampshire. His polling numbers were great, the exit polling looked good…and then Hillary Clinton won the damned thing.

Which means that Democrats, faced with a choice between the old-guard representing everything that is wrong with the party and the fresh face who promised hope…still managed to go in the wrong direction. Again. How in the fuck can a political party be so god-damned stupid? How in the fuck can a party that has lost, and lost, and lost, and lost, continue to look at presidential candidates and pick the one least electable?

There is no way that I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m not holding my nose for a third consecutive election and endorsing a candidate that I have no particular interest in. If the Democrats are so fucking stupid as to push Clinton through as a presidential candidate, then that’ll be one less vote their candidate is getting. This is a strategy that is stupid beyond words; frankly, it deserves to lose in the big election.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal for Barrack Obama. South Carolina favors him, and potentially Nevada. And a run on Super Tuesday isn’t impossible, because he’s an appealing candidate to all kinds of people, not just the sort of Democrat loyalists who don’t know their heads from their asses. Here’s hoping for a great run from Obama, who predictably sounded better in defeat than Clinton did in victory.

Incidentally, I want everybody who is claiming that Hillary is being opposed because she’s a woman to stop - she’s being opposed because she’s a terrible candidate. Her gender has absolutely nothing to do with it. Or at least, it didn’t, until the media starting killing her for allegedly crying. Way to fuck that one up media punditry. As soon as it came down to something as small as a candidate crying, Hillary went from being a loathsome candidate who came to a state like West Virginia and demanded $1,000 from anybody wanting to be in the same room with her (true story!) and turned her into a victim. All the media had to do was let Hillary pull the rug out from under herself - in their rush to do it for her, they accomplished the exact opposite result, and now we’re stuck with the very real possibility that we’ll be enduring her throughout a prolonged presidential campaign.

Schools Bans Facial Hair

A young man in Texas decided to let his wispy mustache grow - his school pulled him out of class and told him to shave it. Are there more important issues in the world? Of course.

Facial hair is a passion of mine. I hate, hate, being clean-shaven, and so I have done it up with huge sideburns, beards, goatees, and anything else that I could get away with. That a school district would claim dominion over a child’s maintenance of his own body, thus preventing the growth of facial hair, is absurd. Previously, I’ve angrily decried rules against t-shirts. This is arguably worse, because instead of school telling a student what clothes he can put on her body, it is telling him what to do to his own body. Schools simply do not enjoy this dominion. A child’s face is his own, and as soon as a school claims the right to shave the kid, surely it will also enjoy the authority to cut his hair, the power to trim his nails, and the strength to do any number of other things.

Besides the intrusion into the lives of these young men - seriously, does a school enjoy the right to tell children what they can and cannot do on their own time? - there is a social issue here about facial hair. My friend Stewart rightly argues that facial hair grows naturally. It is unnatural that it be shaved. We already live in a society in which facial hair is viewed as being something problematic. Now we have schools requiring that young men remove any facial hair that grows immediately, despite the fact that the human condition grows facial hair. Thousands of children (this has apparently been a school policy forever) are growing up believing that facial hair is bad, and not exploring its possibilities during the point in their lives when they’re most likely to decide if they’ll be lifelong growers or lifelong shavers. This is nightmarish.

We don’t need a society of people that look the same. We don’t need a society of people that act the same. And we certainly don’t need yet another policy in which children are treated as pieces of property by schools districts anxious to churn out a graduating class that all looks the same. If individual freedom matters at all, then this is a policy that must be immediately abandoned. To do anything else is unnatural.

A Year Without Booze

It dawned on me the other day that I’ve gone a year without booze. I quit (again) last December, after a Christmas party. I had been sober for six months before falling off the proverbial wagon for three months, although I didn’t fall too terribly hard. Still, by December it was clear that I needed to quit again. So I did. And I haven’t had a drink since.

This is supposed to represent a triumph of the human spirit I suppose, over the madness of alcohol. It can just as easily be viewed as a failure of my own ability to control my desires. I tend toward an attitude of all or nothing: I have lots of tattoos, eat the hottest foods, grow my beard for months on end. This mindset works for some things but not so much for booze.

Watching travel cooking shows is the worst. I really like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, a fantastic show about food and drink. Tonight he was in Charleston, South Carolina and was drinking mint juleps. I neither like mint, nor hard alcohol and yet seeing it be consumed in a garden party made me want a mint julep. What in the hell is that?

Social settings can also be terribly difficult; I started drinking Cokes again because I couldn’t drink beers, and I drink Cokes like I did beers. That’s problematic. My weight is up. Quitting Coke is harder than beer, because it’s my crutch. How lame. (Yes, I’ve heard of Diet Coke, water, etc. It doesn’t appeal in the same way.)

Still, a year without a drink is a relative accomplishment I suppose.

Random Upda…Smash! Sam Angry! Sam Smash!

Tomorrow begin..neth the novel. But today? There’s nothing but angry, but pure, unadulterated fury. Shall we begin?

-My best friend in the blogging universe is one Josh Foust. He has worked dilligently since whenever we first met, turning his Conjecturer into a well read site. Well-read enough that he managed to simultaneously infuriate the Instapundit and Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald we’ll get to in a minute, but first, the Instapundit.

Dear Instapundit,

Stop being an idiot. Stop holding the mainstream media to expectations that you’d never place upon yourself. Stop writing ‘Heh’ and ‘Indeed.’ Stop pretending that you aren’t a vacuous mouthpiece of the Bush Administration. Also, stop being a douchebag.

The irritating thing about Greenwald is that I’ve spent the last several weeks really getting to like the guy. Sure, he trends toward absolutism, like every blogger on planet Earth, but he really had a good streak going recently, in which his criticisms seemed spot on and his analysis read well. So what’s to explain his idiotic refusal to, yknow, actually look at Josh’s blog before describing it as a garden variety pro-war blog. Where on Earth is he getting this crap from? More importantly, don’t we live in a world where bloggers can exist in the netherworld that exists between “I Love George Bush” and “I Hate George Bush.” Or are we back on some stupid playground somewhere where you’re either with me and my friends, or you’re against us, and there’s simply no possibility that different people can take different positions and learn, against all odds, to co-exist with one another? I probably know the answer.

-Meanwhile, revisiting the repression of children, here we have the story of a young woman suspended from school for having maroon weaved into her microbraids. Because holy fucking Moses, if a young girl has maroon weaved into her microbraids, western civilization as we know it and understand it will crumble into the abyss almost immediately. How can we possibly move forward if one girl somewhere decides that she wants to have maroon - of all colors!?!?!? - in her hair. Thank God we’ve given teachers and administrators the right to decide what is and isn’t distracting to the other students. Without their dilligent repression of any individuality at all, what would we have but kids in school with vague differences? And for fuck’s sake people, we absolutely cannot have that! We have to have uniformity in our students! We have to! Jesus Christ fucking declared it in the Bible somewhere…or, umm…something…I don’t even know. Principal Sandy Somogyi is just stupid. That’s all there is to it.

-Idiots.

-Finally, this little slice of blatant racism which will, predictably, go unpunished. Libertarians might argue that, “Nobody should be forced to take care of those people!” and of course, they’d be right. But pointing guns at them and telling them to go back toward the hell that they were coming out of? Particularly if the people holding the guns are whites and the refugees are black? You’ll excuse me if I believe that there was more going on here than limited supplies. Clearly, the whites didn’t want the blacks in their town. You’ll excuse me if I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to threaten violence to keep them out.

Briefly, on Pain

I take a certain amount of pride in my ability to withstand pain. Two recent events have caused me to question this. The first was my trip to Pittsburgh’s Meeting of the Marked, a tattooing convention in which I was originally scheduled to sit for a grueling six hour session. I only ended up sitting for three. I did not feel good, although I did end up with the above lobster. (Sorry for the photo quality. Shooting my leg isn’t easy.) Eric wasn’t feeling well, and I wasn’t sitting well, and so I’m glad we ended it when we did.

The second example is more embarrassing. We have a fireplace at Sanctuary, my home. I went to the backyard to get some firewood - instead of using our pre-chopped stash, I grabbed a huge limb that had died and fallen out of a tree. I broke it up by stomping on it, jumping on it. This worked for most of the limb because the tree was dead, and thus posed no real threat. However, there were thicker sections; those I leaned against a stair and then jumped on. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

One of the pieces didn’t break when I jumped on it, rolling backwards instead, which left me grasping at air as I landed with the entirety of my weight on my left knee. Now, I can barely walk and I’m having a hard time driving. How embarrassing. The lesson, of course, is don’t break your own firewood without an axe. Or something.

-Sidenote: I’ve decided that graduate school isn’t challenging enough. So starting Thursday, I’m doing this. I’ll be posting my 2000 words per day here on the site. No photographs for a month, I fear. However, if you want to follow the creation of this “novel,” feel free.

A Personal Failure

My friend Mitch The Killer - check the Glossary of Characters - recently commented on a blog post that this blog has been busy sucking. In a way, I agree. Whereas I once swore regularly, and raged against the dying of the light, and charged foolishly into windmills, now I bore those few people who stop by with tattooing, rationality, and Libertarianism.

Somebody asked me about this obsession with Libertarians. “Why, what’s wrong with you? Why bother with them? They’re a few percent of the population, and they’re never going to win!” These are excellent points.

Once, I went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, one of the gay Meccas on the East Coast, and I remember thinking, “How on Earth can everybody here look so damned similar? These people are gay! They, if anybody, should be tolerant of difference! Where is the difference?!?” And then I walked down to the ocean, which was beautiful, and screamed at the high tide.

So why the newer focus on Libertarians? Because they claim to care about all of the same things that I do - specifically, individual liberty - and yet they propose solutions which will almost certainly reduce the aggregate amount of individual liberty. I cannot possibly square these two realities.

“Move on! Focus on something else! Jesus Christ already, the Libertarians see individual liberty differently than you do, and they’re not going to change that! Come on already.”

But I can’t. Just like I struggle to let go of most things: old breakups, the Mountaineers not stopping Tremaine Mack on the end in the loss to Miami, the lunacy of running John Kerry for president, four-putting the final green in a golf tournament that I won. “How can people be so fucking stupid,” I wonder about everyone, including myself.

Libertarians aren’t so fucking stupid, for whatever that’s worth. It’s just that they don’t seem to give a good god damn about anybody but themselves. That’s fine I guess. No law requires anybody to care about anybody else. But it seems like the right thing to do, and it certainly seems like there are some people who simply can’t take care of themselves. I know that Libertarians have no problem with innocent people being allowed to die - “Hey, nobody has a right to take my money to pay for that old woman’s selfish desire for medical attention!” - but I can’t take the same position myself.

Sometimes, I have this fantasy. There are people in my town who are crazy anti-abortion protestors. They carry around those signs with babies on them in an attempt to shock us into political submission, and they do it on major street corners, because God-for-fucking-bid that I be allowed to drive to work without being confronted with somebody else’s political crusade. I think it would be fun to make a sandwich board that says, “These people oppose contraception.” Nothing for me clarifies better the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement than the morons who believe that contraception is bad. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will lead to fewer abortions than the correct use of contraception. I imagine that my sign board would actually mean something, that people driving by would say, “God, these people are idiots.” I don’t have the time, or the inclination, to actually do such things. So it remains my little dream, a fun little fantasy.

And so it goes that I find myself standing outside of the Libertarian headquarters shaking my fist like an old man telling those damned kids to get off my lawn. It probably doesn’t make for radically interesting reading, but dammit, I’ve got to be me.