Three Reasons Why The Past Decade Didn't Suck

It's the end of the decade. Yes, it really is. Mathematical pedantry aside, we're entering a new, arbitrarily-determined time unit, and that's something to be kind of excited about. People seem to be complaining about the last ten years, though, and I do think that they were a pretty nasty time, all told. But, they weren't all bad. There's a lot to like about the past ten years. Here are a few things:

It Has Been Much, Much Worse

Think about the twentieth century:

1900s- Not much
1910s- WWI, Spanish flu, millions dead
1920s- Decadence, stock market crash
1930s- Great Depression, WWII, millions dead
1940s- Great Depression, WWII, millions dead
1950s- Cold War, Korean War, nuclear paranoia
1960s- Cold War, Vietnam War, JFK assassination, general unrest
1970s- Cold War, Vietnam War, Watergate, recession
1980s- Cold War, decadence, hair metal
1990s- The Cold War is over! WOW! HUZZAH! (Gulf War happens, though.)
2000s- Iraq War, Recession

Our parents and grandparents faced existential threats to the U.S. in the form of the Great Depression, Nazi Germany, and the USSR. We no longer have that. As much as some might attempt to remake Islamic terrorists into the Nazis or Commies of our time, they do not pose a serious threat to Western civilization. Think about it: The biggest and most complicated thing that they were able to do was destroy a significant portion of downtown New York. As devastating as that was, it was nothing compared to what Germany did to Poland, Japan did to China, we did to Dresden, and any nuclear bomb could have done to anywhere.

Moreover, as awful as the current recession is, it's remarkable that we don't have people standing in bread lines or trying to sell pencils in the street. Yes, Detroit has suffered quite a bit, but the economy has started growing again. The Dust Bowl destitution from the thirties stayed in the thirties. We don't have any Hoovervilles. Think about that: We've been through a long, crushing recession, but have managed to avoid absolute destitution. In its own way, that's great.

The Internet!

Remember the internet ten years ago? It was full of dancing hamsters, pirated music and porn. Now, it's full of lolcats, pirated music and porn, but also a bunch of other neat stuff. Think about this: Let's say you want to learn how to decoupage. So, you Google "how to decoupage" and WHAM-O! There are a bunch of sites telling you how to do precisely that! That is really, utterly, super profound. That access to information is unprecedented in human history, and despite all of the annoying memes and pictures of cats, the Internet really is the greatest thing since bread or slices. Cyberpunk (remember that?) was a SF genre chiefly characterized by the existence of a giant web of computers all across the world connected to each other. Now, Cyberpunk is dead because it's central tenant is real. This past decade, we made a subgenre of SF obsolete. How cool is that?

The Decline of Bigotry

Yes, there's lots of problems with the health care legislation, and no, Obama didn't magically fix everything with his ultra-charismatic Jesus-like wizardry, but it's still fantastic that the U.S. elected a black dude. And, despite Proposition Eight passing in California, gay people are getting married in the U.S., and we will have it sooner or later. There's gay marriage in Iowa! That's pretty amazing. If, thirty years ago, you were to tell someone that in 2009 the president would be black and gay dudes would be setting up wedding registries they probably would have said "Shut your pie-hole, hippie!" HA-HA! Take that, you imagined Archie Bunker-like hypothetical conservative person! Woo-hoo!

Carl Sagan (one of my heroes) once said "We live in an extraordinary age." He said that back in the eighties, and he was right-on then. He's extra-super-mega correct now. As much fun as it is to bitch, we do live in an extraordinary age, and it really is getting better all the time. Here's to the next decade.

Mallrat

"You do realize," said the HR woman, "That you're very qualified for this?" The statement annoyed me. Yes, I realized that I was "very qualified," by which she meant "overqualified." Yes, I knew it would be a pay cut compared to what I was used to, yes, yes, yes.

"You do realize," I wanted to say, "That there's a giant fucking recession out there? Right?" I didn't say that, though. Instead, I held my tongue and got a seasonal job at Macy's, America's Department Store. I was a teacher, once. Now I would sell pants and blenders and underwear and neckties.

Training was insultingly slow. I wanted to simply say, "I have done retail before, and I can see that your proprietary computer system is very intuitive. Can I start working now?" But, I had to slog through it anyhow. "A lot of people don't have jobs right now," I thought to myself, "a lot of people don't have jobs..." (Echos of "There are starving kids in Ethiopia! Now clean you plate!" I don't think my parents ever said that to me, though.)

My job is in Beaverton. The commute is long and I wish I could read on the bus, but I get motion sick. I listen to podcasts and music instead. The commute is the worst part of the job, in it's own way. If I was going two hours to teach or do something meaningful, I wouldn't mind as much, though.

I bought a black suit so I could work there. The dress code is black, all black. I know this makes us easier to identify for customers, and for security cameras.

We are supposed to sell the Macy's credit card. I don't feel comfortable selling a financial product that I don't know the details of, so I haven't bothered to push it. I exceed all my sales goals easily, but as far as I'm concerned the credit card can go fuck itself. They tried to get me to get one, and I said no. I don't have any credit card debt, and I'm not really in favor of it generally.

People have lots of coupons. Most of the time, the coupons don't work, especially with big brands like Levi's and Calvin Klein. When the coupons don't work, people get angry, but they buy the expensive things anyway.

Most of the time when people as me questions about products, I just read them the labels on the products. "Is this dishwasher safe?" they ask. "Yes," I say, reading the label that says so, "it is." "Thank you so much," they say, and then I ring them up.

Selling is easy. Lots of people just want to be reassured.

I wish our Macy's has a Santaland. It doesn't. Santa's out in the mall, and there's just a line up to his chair. He's near the food court.

I talked to a woman who said this job was a ninety percent pay cut for her. I felt sorry for her, but I also wondered where all of her savings or whatever went.

Vendors from companies like Waterford, Calvin Klein and Calphalon are sometimes in the stores. One of them said to me "They treat you season guys like shit," and then apologized for swearing. I told her it was okay.

I keep wanting to tell people that I don't do this in real life, that I'm not actually a Macy's worker, that really I teach English. Being there is a blow to pride, and it really does sting, just like Marcellus Wallace said it would. ("A lot of people don't have jobs. A lot of people don't have jobs...")

I was scheduled to work on Christmas Eve, and talked myself out of it.

Christmas music fills the store. Some of the songs are rock or hip-hop versions of Christmas tunes, and I think that these versions of the songs are embarrassing, like watching my dad try to dance.

There are no religious Christmas songs. I like those songs much better, usually. I like Oh Holy Night, Oh Come, All Ye Faithful, and Joy to the World. I like them all, and they are never, ever played.

They do sometimes play the theme from A Charlie Brown Christmas, though, and I like that.

Macy's in Beaverton is part of a mall. I wish I worked at the downtown store. At that store, I could pretend that I worked at some class joint in the heart of Portland. Instead, I work at a mall.

The mall would be okay if it had a bookstore to hang out in on lunches and breaks, but it doesn't.

It does have two Starbucks', though, and I often get coffee there. I don't like saying "tall" or "grande" because I think it's sort of silly so I'll say something like "Can I get a twelve ounce coffee please?" "One tall coffee? Sure!" is a common reply. I don't like hearing grown up people having to talk like that.

A guy behind me one day is laying it on thick "Thank you so much for shopping with us!" he says, and I want to punch him in the mouth. I'm always polite, but he's obsequious, parroting all of the things in the training videos. I like finding real people in retail establishments, and he was a total Caufeldian phony.

I don't like saying that things are "9.99" or 29.99." Those are bullshit prices, and everyone knows it. I like saying that something is "ten" or "thirty dollars" much more.

My girlfriend drove me to work one morning and brought me coffee. I was touched, but also a little embarrassed that she saw me on the sales floor. Part of me doesn't want anyone I know or respect to see me doing this.

I asked to stay on after Christmas. I don't like it, I'm overqualified, but, yes, there's a giant recession out there. A lot of people don't have jobs...

"Recreational Consumerism": The Ikea Experience

Until recently, until that fateful two days ago, I had only heard of "Ikea" in rumor and hearsay. The furniture and furnishings, yes, those were familiar, but the interior of the blue-and-yellow (if you go cross-eyed, it's green) store remained terra incognita. I'd heard stories of it. Travelers' tales and legends, songs, lays, and canticles. The bards spoke of the Fountain of Youth and Fantastical Beasts. Dragons of ferocity and terror were said to lay within its caves, and Ikea's storied glens and forests were thick with Unicorns and creatures of Faerie. I knew not what lay in store (in this store) for me, as I set out in my gilded chariot (by "gilded chariot" I mean "my girlfriend's Volvo") for a new land of wonder and inexpensive modernist furniture.

Ikea, so long rumored, did not disappoint.

Stepping into the display rooms I was immediately impressed by how everything was, first and foremost, contextualized. Ikea does not start by showing you aisles, boxes, or even displays of buyable merchandise. Before any of that, it puts you in the right mood, it romances you properly. Most furniture stores show you goods in a manner that is totally divorced from how the merchandise will look in real life, i.e., you see a couch and it's in a row with a bunch of other couches. Or, there's a chair displayed on a pedestal, with nothing else. Such methods of display are utilitarian, perhaps, but they are not natural. Ikea's strategy, though, is to show its merchandise off in idealized domestic settings, to put its chairs, tables, and sinks in the sexiest contexts possible, and it works. Before I was able to pick up or handle anything buyable, the display rooms got me good and ready with a heavy dose of mercantile foreplay, and boy, did I appreciate that.

The displays were aspirational, inspiring, and, best of all, I could relate to them. Unlike so many catalogs and architectural advertisements that feature heavy furniture that costs more per pound than I do per hour, I could actually see myself assembling these bits of particle board and screws into a delightful modern living space. I had been located, demographically, and hopelessly seduced. Gazing upon the desks and tables and beds and curtains and television sets and spatulas I couldn't help but enjoy myself. My girlfriend referred to it as "recreational consumerism," and, yes, that was the perfect word for it.

Stopping for lunch midway through the excursion, I couldn't help but order the Swedish meatballs. There was no other option, really. The meatballs were too distinctively Ikean to pass up, too much part of the idealized experience. They were small and distinctive, manageable and delicious like so much of the merchandise that the store offered. Gravy and all they were wonderful, and I looked at a picture of Stockholm on the wall.

By the time Ikea hits you with the part that looks like an actual store, the part where you get a cart and put things in it, you are raring to go. You want it. You've had your aspirations piqued and sweet nothings of consumerism whispered into your ear. Ikea has suggested and shown to you all that it can offer, all that can be yours. You want to stroll through the housewares section, inserting things into your cart with capitalistic abandon. "I don't know what this is," one of us would say, holding some kind of houseware or domestic gadget, "but I get the sense that it's somehow useful. I want to do things with it!" Indeed. I did manage to control myself, to not buy a shoulder bag that I found useful-seeming, but the final part of the store has you wanting to recklessly consume, and things that seem like large purchases look like impulse buys under Ikea's seductive spell. By the time I handed over my debit card (I bought a nicely inexpensive dresser, by the way) a wave of relief and satisfaction coursed through me, fantastic release.

The next day I opened my new box of furniture, and got to relive a bit of the Ikea experience as I assembled my new furniture. (I'm even actually reorganizing my room.) That's what Ikea has going for it, and that's why it's great: It offers an experience. Most of the time when I've bought something, I think little of where I got it, and mostly I just want to get home with my purchase. Ikea, though, has managed to make itself a kind of theme park, a sort of temple that is a font of affordable and neat-looking things. You can't really say that about anywhere else. I'll stop, before I start sounding too much like Ikea's bitch.

I will simply say: Ikea, you sold me furniture, took my money, and I liked it. You win at capitalism. Congratulations!

You Really Ought to Read The Road

No, I haven't seen the movie, and oddly, I don't want to. I did enjoy Cormac McCarthy's The Road, immensely, though. Well, maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word, as so much in the novel is rather dark and nasty, but it does dark and nasty really, really well.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, it's about a father and son making their way through an utterly dead post-apocalyptic landscape, and that's pretty much it. The back of the book describes it as "burned America," but I think that such characterization misses the point. The ravaged landscape didn't so much remind me of a post-apocalyptic America so much as it did Mordor. Yes, I mean that. The father and son in The Road reminded me most of Frodo and Sam in Mordor, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Through a hopeless landscape, through uncertainty, danger, fear, and anxiety, the two principals have no choice but to move forward. They have no idea what their goal is, what will happen at the end, or whether they have the strength or ability to get to where they're going. But, standing still is not an option. They are driven, compelled, to some uncertain goal. It also reminded me of Kafka's The Castle, as well, wherein the main character must navigate through a clouded and hostile landscape to an uncertain conclusion.

Despite the immensely negative worlds that these stories present, I generally find them rather hopeful. The heroes are in Hell, the underworld, a bleak place, yes, and their is no guarantee that they shall reach their goals. But, they know what their goals are, they have no option but to strive. Whether it's truly hopeless or not can't be known, so Sisyphus has to push the rock upward. He has to. It will crush him if he lets go.

So, if you like books about pressing through fear and dread, read it. It's not nearly as good as Blood Meridian (one of the best and most frightening books I've ever read) but it does depict the classic landscape of anxiety in a pretty perfect way.

Glam 'N Gore: Two Neato Movies With Lots of Shiny Things and Blood

Weird, sexy, dark shit. Black leather and nasty violence, bloody messes and flamboyant costumes. Recently I saw two movies that had these enticing properties in spades upon spades. One of them was actually good, and the other was enjoyable trash.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is not a good movie. I did, however, find it immensely enjoyable. The film very much wants to be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, and its earnest desire to supplant that flick as the reigning midnight movie is actually sort of cute. Rocky Horror, though, is ultimately a fun little romp about exciting underwear with not much in the way of blood and gore. Repo!, though, more than outperforms Rocky Horror when it comes to blood, gore, and sheer fuck up-edness.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on Anthony Stewart Head (you know, Giles from Buffy) as a futuristic repo man who extracts designer organs from deadbeats who can't pay their surgery bill. Also, there's some implied sibling fucking and a neon-blue corpse-based designer drug in their somewhere. Also, Sarah Brighton sings (oh yeah- it's a rock opera with songs of dubious musical quality) and Paris Hilton's face falls off. It is awesome. It's not good, artful, or redeeming, but it kicks ass. I would recommend watching it with lots of booze and lots of friends. My group peppered the screen with MST3K style retorts, and we frequently had to stop for "booze breaks." Repo! isn't the next Rocky Horror, but the world is a bit more nifty because of its existence.

Titus, though, is an actual good movie. This is surprising, given the source material, Titus Andronicus, considered one of Shakespeare's worst plays. The Bard wrote it very early in his career, and I suspect that the budding playwright was thinking of little else besides how to pack the house with rabble. This is several orders of magnitude down from, say, King Lear. Titus Andronicus is grindhouse Shakespeare. Heads and hands are lopped of characters, rape and insanity feature prominently, someone gets their tongue ripped from their head, an absurd body count mounts, cannibalism and slaughter ensue, and there's even some blaxploitation in there.

Director Julie Taymor obviously realized this, so Titus is an insane, weird, costume-heavy, gory, version of the play that gleefully slams anachronisms together, mixing gladiator armor with overcoats, vibing together the aesthetics of ancient and fascist Rome in a blend of insanity that just sort of works with the over-the-top source material. Anthony Hopkins plays the title character with more than a little of his Hannibal Lecter-y scenery chewing, and it's an entirely appropriate leading performance to go with all of the swirly weird shit, severed limbs, casual murder, and general shininess that pervades the film. If you like Shakespeare (or just movies with really nice costumes and/or orgies) see it. That old Elizabethian hack would be proud.

"But the evil is that they hold for certain that they are in the light."

I sit down at my computer on Sunday night, all ready to finish up my post on Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco that I'd been working on earlier, and what do I find? That post-stealing cockblocker Seph has beaten me to it. The nerve. Nevertheless, I had this thing mostly written. Might as well finish it up...

The plot centers aroudn three editors at a vanity press are up to their earlobes in manuscripts about the occult, conspiracy theories, and general weirdness. To amuse themselves they decide to create a world-spanning fictitious model of history and reality that connects all of the esoteric stuff that they've read about, a grandiose intellectual game they call the Plan. Problems arise when a rather nutty group gets wind of their fictitious explanation of everything, and takes it seriously. Indeed, even the creators of the fictitious Plan take it far too seriously themselves, and eventually their creation consumes them.

(Incidentally, I would not have really enjoyed the book very much had I not been constantly consulting Wikipedia about the various historical, religious, and esoteric references the tome is crammed with. I liked the intricate connections and fanciful historical weaving, but constantly having to look up what the hell the characters were talking about made it something of a slog.)

I will admit to having a sort of enthusiasm for this kind of thing- I loved The Illuminatus! Trilogy, have read both the Principia Discordia and the Book of the SubGenius, and know what "fnord" means. The central appeal of the occult or conspiracy theory genre is that at least someone is in charge, at least that which appears arbitrary and meaningless from the outset actually has a place in a grander scheme. Everything means something, and while the world may be dangerous and mysterious, it is at least not capricious. I understand that appeal, enough that I sported an eye-in-the-pyramid on my arm at Burning Man. However, I also engaged the book somewhat seriously, and through the filter of my own particular biases and interests.

So much of what is described in Foucault's Pendulum- the esoteric arts, arcane secrets, cloistered spiritual orders -seems to imply a certain amount of contempt for the wondrous nature of the real world. For truths to have any sort of impact or value for the esoteric scholars in the book, they need, necessarily, to be secreted from view, to be apart from and cloistered off of the "real" world, to be part of narrative that is not accepted by "conventional" descriptions of history or science. Some of the most painful, and poignant, chapters of the book are when the main character's girlfriend offers him grounded and realistic insights into some of the details of the Plan. She is persuasive and touching in her deconstruction of the "hidden" truths that the narrator and his friends have concerned themselves with, but despite her enlightenment, despite the fact that he even says "yes" to her, the narrator and his companions still remain enmeshed in their all-consuming fiction.

Despite the book's slogginess, I found this emotional thrust to be deeply affecting. Years ago, I spent no small amount of time in the occult and New Age section of a used bookstore in Eugene, stocking shelves and conversing with the patrons there. I could not help but feel that these book buyers, these enthusiasts of the occult and arcane, needed their truths and revelations to be hidden and privileged. Knowledge, for them, did not come from the "real" world, but from a realm actively suppressed and ignored by reality.

Giving these people their books, ringing them up and hearing their comments about them filled me with a range of emotions that went from pity to anger. In the rest of the store one could find books on history rather than conspiracy theories, medicine rather than auras, philosophy rather than hokum. Set before them was the choice between that which was enriching and real, and that which was self-deluding. They chose, actively and deliberately, to delude themselves, much like the narrator of Foucault's Pendulum fails to heed the advice of his girlfriend. Worst of all, they thought that they were privileged with truth, privy to something more real than real.

Again, This is not to say that I don't find that sort of stuff amusing. I think that delving into weird shit and strange beliefs is a lot of fun. It's utter brain candy, and as such I could entirely identify with the pretentious editors in Foucault's Pendulum, men who take obvious scholarly joy in weaving all of this stuff into a coherent whole as an exercise in intellectual gamesmanship. At the end of the day, though, there is more real wonder in a single real leaf than in fraudulent delusion. The conduits of the greenery, the veins and the stems, the photosynthetic processes and changes from green to gold- all of these are greater truths and more potent revelations than anything about telluric energy or Templars. There is more active power in those intricate veins than in all of the ley lines that supposedly cross the Earth. Realizing that, one should not mourn the death of delusions or cry over the loss of intricate conspiracies. Rather, take joy in reality, chaotic and undirected though it may be.

(One last thing, unrelated to my above rant. When the Da Vinci Code came out, the thematic similarities were obvious and Eco was asked if he'd read it. His response:

I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel Foucault’s Pendulum, which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.
- But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
No. In Foucault’s Pendulum I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.

As far as I'm concerned, that is some serious literary bitch-slapping, proclaiming a lesser author to be one of your comical characters. I think that Umberto Eco could probably make Dan Brown's fingernails fall off just by staring at him, such is his brainy power.)

Watching The Planets!

The Flaming Lips have finally released the video that I took part in, and it is pretty damn cool. I'm most visible towards the end, wherein we all take off Wayne Coyne's clothes.

Here it is, very NSFW.