Break That Cycle: Why I Gave Up Pasta

I am jonesing badly.

It is an unpleasant feeling. I keep thinking about the object of my desire/addiction, the thing that I want so badly to enter my bloodstream. I'm antsy and I wonder how long this self-denial will last. If it's for real. I keep thinking how easy it would be to go to my hook-up, how simple a task it would be to trade cash for what a really want, and make all of this energy and anxiety go away. I keep telling myself that I'll make it a month. Yes. At least a month.

I'm talking, of course, about how I've given up pasta.

I love pasta. Noodles are, bar none, my favorite food in the entire world. They are my ultimate, super, desert-island megafood. Ever since I was a little kid and I was making fresh pasta with my mom, I've loved the stuff. Loved it. Right now, if I could have my way, a bowl of fettucini alfredo with salmon would show up right in front of me.

But, that's not going to happen. I'll admit it- I almost bought the ingredients for fettucini alfredo at the store, and didn't. I bought some eggs, veggies, and a bottle of wine instead. (With that bottle of wine, at least I'm indulging myself a bit...)

I gave up my very favorite food ever as an exercise both in vanity and self discipline. On one hand, I'd like to get rid of my gut. Having a 36" waist was not a pleasant truth to face, and, being quite nearly thirty, I need to admit that stuffing myself with carbohydrates and fat (i.e., pasta covered with cheese) has consequences. Time to give up the food that I most often pig out on. So far, I have noticed some results. Hopefully, this will be the one and only time in my life that I fill out my current pants...

The other aspect of it, though, is more ephemeral. It is very useful to give up something that was so normal, so expected. Pasta was what I made for myself when I could not think of anything else to make. It was a default food that required no thinking, no planning, no real cognizance of any sort. Giving up something that was so much a part of my normal schedule has required a great deal of presence of mind.

The result of this is that I've thought far more about what I eat than I previously did. I think about the composition of my meals, what I'm actually putting into my body, what is necessary and what is not. I broke a cycle that was not necessarily healthy or useful, and it feels great. I just finished eating chicken and asparagus for dinner, and I know it was sufficient. That knowledge is extremely nice to have, comforting in an immense way.

I don't generally endorse puritanism or self-denial for it's own sake, but I do think that testing oneself in small ways is usually a good idea. Seeing how much of something you can do, or take, or go without. Seeing how much of a given thing is necessary or not. Power over others or over situations is all well and good, but it is quite rewarding to feel power over oneself in tiny ways on a regular basis. I gave up pasta. Probably not forever, but I banished my favorite food from my life. The results have been amenable.

While it has a rap for being associated with things like puritans, the military, and religious types, when done right I really do think that self-discipline can benefit people in very non-fucked-up ways.

I'm still jonesing. Hopefully I'll stick with this.

May First, 2010: What I Think About Immigration

Yes, I know it's a few days later, but I think it's fitting that I'm writing this particular post on Cinco de Mayo.

A flash back to my time in Japan: On more than one occasion I was stopped by police, asked to show my ID, what I did for a living, where I worked, etc. I was stopped because I was very obviously a foreigner, and the police in Japan routinely ask for ID from those who are obviously not Japanese. I would not say that I was harassed per se, but the whole process was inconvenient and somewhat humiliating.

More to the point though, I hated these incidents because of what it said about Japan. Every time I got stopped by a police officer, Japan revealed itself to be a country possessed of an alienating insularity. I wanted Japan to be a better country than that, a modern country, a country that didn't really mind if foreigners were about. Clinging to national identifications seems deeply childish, and the police stops that I had to put up with did not really accomplish anything. The only thing that they did was remind me that I was a foreigner, and that Japan (as much as I loved it) could be a real dick sometimes.

Which brings me to Arizona.

I would like to believe that the U.S. is a bit more enlightened than Japan, a bit more inclusive and broad-minded. I would like to believe that the U.S. will never behave like an insular island nation, insecure in its own cultural integrity. On May first, a substantial amount of Portland's Hispanic population was in the streets, protesting more generally for recognition and equality, but with a special emphasis on Arizona.

I have a hard time, thinking about immigration. On one hand, I do think that people should come to the U.S. legally, that crossing borders without authorization is, indeed, a crime. That said, simply trying to deport everyone in the U.S. illegally would be a massively impractical (and probably inhumane) undertaking. Something else needs to be done.

The protesters and various speakers over and over said that they were in the U.S. for jobs. That's the crux of it, right there. Every year, thousands of people make the completely rational decision that it is preferable to be illegal in the U.S. than poor in Mexico. I find that very, very affecting. Being poor, out of work, and generally on the lowest rung of the social ladder in Mexico is so bad, that every year a very appreciable number of people make the decision that it is better to be surrounded by hostile law enforcement, live without documentation, and be in the midst of a language that you don't understand. They choose that in favor of poverty in their home country. Think about that- think about being so completely destitute and desperate that you decide to smuggle yourself to, say, Russia in order to actually support yourself. That would take a certain amount of wherewithal.



The U.S. does not have an immigration problem with Canada. There is a reason for that- Canada offers a range of economic options for its dwellers. It's a perfectly nice country, and the poor in Canada are not so desperate that they choose our illegality over their poverty. Canada has jobs and social infrastructure, and that's why the Canadian unemployed tend to stay there.

The fact of the matter is that illegal immigration from Mexico is going to be a problem until Mexico gets its act together. This is not something that we can necessarily fix quickly. It has taken us over a year to fix the comparably coherent domestic economy, and as much as I'd like to believe in American economic and political power, we cannot pull up Mexico by ourselves.

Until then, yes, the people who are here from Mexico (a dysfunctional, corrupt, and impoverished narco-state) ought to be accommodated in a humane matter. This does not mean that we should open the border to all comers, but it does mean that if someone has been in the U.S. for over a decade, contributing to the economy and possibly even with a family here, then amnesty should be considered. (One set of my great grandparents also came to the U.S. illegally, so the family story goes. That also certainly effects my views on the matter.)



I most certainly don't think that anyone who looks foreign should be stopped by police and asked for ID. I brought up my experiences with Japanese police not so much to identify my situation with that of Hispanic immigrants, but because I knew that I had it easy- I was an American white guy. I'm sure those police were much harder on the people whom they heard speaking Mandaring, Cantonese, and Korean. I'm sure the Arizona police will be much harder on Hispanics. (To be fair, the Portland police were out in force, and I didn't see any incidents of nastiness. They seemed much more concerned with directing traffic.)



The whole march had a kind of carnival atmosphere to it, and as much as I tried to stay a disinterested observer, snapping away with my camera, I couldn't help but experience great feelings of empathy for the families carrying flags, placards, and signs in English and Spanish. The pro-pot protesters in the square looked somewhat sophomoric by comparison. Here were people asking for things like jobs and familial coherence. They were asking for something that I thought was immensely reasonable. It is a shame that their requests have to be shouted.

May First, 2010: What I Think About Legalizing Marijuana

On May first, the unofficial holiday of protests, of demonstrations, of signs and shouting and slogans, was in full swing in downtown Portland. I was somewhat conflicted- that Saturday was also Free Comic Book Day, and the geek in me wanted to bike around town to the various shops and get all of the free books that I could get my hands on. I did go to two shops, but my political curiosity got the better of me, and I spent most of the day in downtown Portland.

In Pioneer Courthouse Square, a very specific kind of music was playing, a certain slack-sounding rock, a loose, unconstrained music that immediately brings to mind tie-die and unkempt beards. Several tents were set up in the square, many of them selling glass pipes, hemp crafts, and other marijuana peripherals. The whole event was dominated by NORML (National Organization for Marijuana Legalization) and a not-unfamiliar vibe of hippie rhetoric and low-level outrage dominated the event. The police, of course, were milling about diligently.



A speaker took the stage, and began to speak about the alleged virtues of medical marijuana, and declared that the U.S. was denying sick people medicine to which they had a right. The medium-sized crowd responded favorably, applauding and whooping, all the while milling about, signing petitions, and looking at pipes. The speaker went on to extol the various virtues of marijuana, its safety and supposed health benefits, the economic rewards of turning it into a legitimate crop, etc. I have to admit, that the rhetoric coming from the stage made me more than a little uncomfortable.



I am in favor of marijuana legalization. More specifically, I'm in favor of recreational legalization, and believe that moderate use by responsible adults is fine. I have no moral opposition to the drug, and an generally a civil libertarian when it comes to what people should be allowed to do with their own bodies. I think that legalization would be a fine thing, and will probably come about in the next twenty years or so.

Nevertheless, the rhetoric in the Square on May first made me a bit squeamish. I believe that there were a few reasons for this:

1- While I don't doubt that marijuana has some pharmaceutical benefits in specific cases, I can't help but wonder if advocacy of medical marijuana is a fig leaf for recreational legalization. Actually, I think that this is the case more often than not. Pretending that marijuana is some kind of panacea or essential medicine being denied to sick people makes me very skeptical. There are several depressants and opiates already available to the health care industry. I would rather have honest advocacy of a recreational drug, rather than dressing it up as a medical necessity.

2- I do not like it when cannabis advocates call marijuana "safe." It is true that it is relatively safe, compared to, say, cocaine or heroin. To classify marijuana as the same kind of narcotic as these drugs is absolutely ridiculous. However, it is still a drug, and still entails a certain amount of risk. Drug consumption is always a managed risk, and it is a risk that individuals should be allowed to take. Moreover, just because something is unsafe, it can still be managed. I would not pretend for a moment, for example, that driving is perfectly safe, or that whiskey, traveling, or sex are safe. However, all those things are worthwhile, and the benefits outweigh the risks.

3- Marijuana advocates do not seem to anticipate the economic changes that legalization will entail. The speaker in the square repeatedly mentioned everyone "growing their own marijuana." While I have no doubt that this will happen, she and others like her seem very naive about how marijuana will be commercialized almost as soon as it is legalized. I believe (but cannot prove) that the various tobacco companies privately hope for marijuana legalization. They have the infrastructure already to manufacture and distribute smokables. I truly believe that RJR Nabisco will be selling joints as soon as they are legally able to. This does not seem to occur to many legalization advocates.

4- Enthusiasm about drugs generally makes me uncomfortable. I am not by any means a puritan (in opinion or behavior) but I think that many people mistake the easement and momentary satisfaction provided by drugs as a substitute for genuine enlightenment. I believe it was in Heaven and Hell where Aldous Huxley after (I think rather unevenly) extolled the virtues of hallucinogens, referred to the experiences they offered as a "gratuitous grace," a momentary glimpse of supposed understanding, as opposed to the thing itself. I do not doubt the feeling of relaxation that comes with, for instance, a frosty beer after a work day, but I would not mistake that for genuine psychological well-being, the ability to be at peace in the midst of chaos. Genuine existential satisfaction comes from an array of experiences that cannot be readily obtained.

Given all that, I did agree with the protesters about their policy prescriptions- that marijuana should be legal. However, I did not feel a real connection with them, did not see myself as part of their "team." I will vote with them, but I am not of them.

In Praise of Mass Market Paperbacks

Like I said in my last post, I recently read Anathem. I enjoyed it, but one of the things I liked most about it was that even though it was a nearly a thousand pages, it was fairly easy to carry around. The edition that I had was a mass market paperback with rather small type. It fit easily into my bag, was lightweight, and generally not troublesome to read whilst in a coffee shop or bar. I appreciated it not only as a fun book about alien science-monks, but also as a convenient object.

Which brings me to Infinite Jest.

So far, I'm very much enjoying David Foster Wallace's magnum opus. I've read several of his essays, and (like Neal Stephenson) have a gigantic man-crush on the dude. (I hope that his being dead does not make that creepy.) Anyway, the book so far is absolutely a joy to read, but I continually wish that it was smaller.

Not shorter. Smaller.

The edition of Infinite Jest that I have is an enormous bricklike doorstop of literature, a weighty tome in every sense of the word. I can feel my satchel eating into my shoulder because of its weight, and when I'm reading it in a coffee shop it takes up a prodigious amount of table space. As a book, it's wonderful, but as an information-delivery device, it is somewhat lacking.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Infinite Jest is about the same length as Anathem, and could just as easily have been published as a mass market paperback. However, the publisher has deemed it fit that DFW's book be an inconvenience to the reader, a ponderous and massive object. This is unfortunate, really. I would enjoy the book far more if it were not so physically troublesome, if I could actually put it in my satchel and have room for other things as well.

So, why isn't it a mass market paperback?

Trade paperbacks are an attractive intermediary between mass markets and hardcovers. They are cheaper than hardcovers, but maintain a bit of the same gravitas that traditional unpaperback books tend to have. Mass market paperbacks are usually associated with disposable bits of entertainment- genre fiction. When one thinks of mass market paperbacks, one usually imagines lurid mystery novels with the author's name stamped in gaudy raised type, or romance novels that are only a few steps removed from outright pornography. One thinks of SF novels based on licensed IPs such as Star Wars and Star Trek, and masturbatory jingoistic military fiction by the likes of Tom Clancy and his ilk. Horror novels and westerns are brought to mind, all genres that are (unfortunately) regarded as unliterary, unthoughtful, unworthy.

To publish a trade paperback is to announce that a book is not pulp. It is not a disposable entertainment or an unliterary bit of genre flotsam. To publish a trade paperback is to announce a book as somehow worthy. It is obvious that DFW's publishers wished him to stand apart from novels that feature vampires and spies, and that his august work was quite literally heftier than that of the average author.

Which is a shame, really, since his book is such a pain in the ass to lug around. Mass market paperbacks are wonderful at what they do, and do not deserve their stigma. As a format, I pity them, and wish they were more highly regarded.

Of course, this whole point will become moot in a few years, when everything's on e-readers anyway...

In Which I Read Anathem

Neal Stephenson has become something of a nerd saint, penning Snow Crash, probably one of the most widely-read SF books of the last twenty years. He's also a fiercely intelligent cataloger of minutiae, filling books such as Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle with the kind of stuff that will make you ridiculously good at Trivial Pursuit.

Anathem, his latest book, is not his best, but I still enjoyed it immensely. It's not as weirdly creative as Snow Crash or The Diamond Age, but even then it's immensely engaging- provided you have a specific personality type. If you are wondering about whether or not you should read it, ask yourself the following questions:

1: Do you like books where most of the action is taken up by characters having long discussions about philosophy, science, history, and math?

2: Do you enjoy books that take place on other planets wherein the social and governmental system is somewhat different than our own?

3: Do you like made-up words, most of which are tweaked versions of Greek and Latin terms?

4: Do you like books with explanations of geometry in the appendix?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, go ahead and read Anathem. In a nutshell, the book is about a bunch of cloistered monks devoted to science on an alien world. Then (and I don't want to give anything away) stuff happens. Big stuff. Totally gonzo, wowzers sci-fi stuff. However, the book spends the first three hundred pages grounded in a hermetic, academic atmosphere, so even when the hugely epic world-shaking plot starts up, it still feels pretty grounded. With all of the philosophical exposition, the book acts as a sort of SF, grown-up version of Sophie's World, and I mean that in a good way.

What makes Stephenson so special, though, is that you get a real sense of joy from his work. Stephenson isn't just smart- he seems to jump for joy at all of the wonderful stuff there is in the world, and Anathem gives you a very real sense of that. After reading Anathem, Platonism seems interesting to me all over again.

Yes, it's one thousand pages of alien science-monks and made-up words, but it's also a very obvious labor of love. Stephenson doesn't just know quite a bit about the history of philosophy, he also knows precisely why it's so interesting, so wonderful, and so worth studying. That's why Anathem's 900-plus pages go by so fast- the author is jumping up and down about how wondrous the world is.

Something That Freaks Me Out About People Who Shout Loudly

Looking at the tea partiers (or, as I like to call them, "teabaggers") one cannot help but think that they're having a pretty good time.

Yes, their signs show all the marks of (irrational) outrage, but one of the reasons I think it is so hard to kill their mythology (for instance, about how Obama is a socialist/Marxist/Nazi Kenyan) is that they seem to enjoy it. I really think they do. I really think that the people out there, waving their signs, listening to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, are having a lot of fun.

Be honest with yourself for a moment- It's kind of neat to feel aggrieved. It's fun to feel like you're in a wronged minority, like you're part of some grand struggle and speaking truth to power. It's ennobling and invigorating and gives you something meaningful (seemingly) to be a part of. The teabaggers are not the only ones who behave like this, who take pleasure in supposed feelings of persecution. Liberals do it as well. Spend any time with radical leftists and get them talking about an implacable and oppressive government/business/military/industrial complex and you'll see that they, too, take a certain pleasure in imagining themselves as David against Goliath.

This is truly frightening.

Obviously, feeling aggrieved is fun because it gives you something to do, gives you something to rage against and yell about. The "aggrieved" are provided with straw man to whom they can assign all their woes, justly or not. For instance, I believe that one of the reasons that the U.S. has a bad reputation with the Muslim world is that Muslim elites use America as a scapegoat for domestic woes. This is not only expedient for, say, the Saudi royal family, but also fun and easy for parties involved. (I truly believe that if the Islamic world have a better, more diverse economy, we'd have less scapegoating, less terrorism, and, probably, less Islam.)

This feeling of perceived oppression, whether it be present in teabaggers, Islamic terrorists, or Portlanders who call themselves "anarchist" (while only vaguely knowing what that means) also removes responsibility from the believer. It is much easier, for example, to complain about public works than it is to build them.

If all you want is to destroy, if all you are doing is condemning and shouting, as the teabaggers are, then you are relieved of the responsibility of articulating a coherent social vision. True, idealists such as those I've mentioned above might have a utopian or long-range ideal, but they don't, for example, really have anything about what we should be doing about financial reform right now. They have divested themselves of the responsibility to be creative and constructive, especially in the immediate future.

Teabaggers, shouting and carrying their signs, not only get to experience a rush of seductive emotional energies, but also, I think, a sense of relief. They relieve themselves of obligations, of pressures to provide solvency. They relieve themselves of having to have a plan, of having to articulate a coherent solution that (might) work. They play, instead, in an emotionally rewarding mythology.

Shaking your fist saves you from having to write a plan. Seeing the teabaggers (or any radicals) on television, waving signs, reveling in anger, I cannot help but think that it is not just about politics, but also release. There is an escape from responsibility, a pleasurable cessation of obligation, and in the shouting and I truly believe that the main draw is the enjoyment of a passing, false ease.

This is all much more fun, and easier, than being a reasonable participant in an educated democratic society, and that, I think, is kind of creepy.

One More Thing About E.F.N.Y...

The best part of the movie. It happens in the future! The gritty, dark, crime-infested future where America has become a brutal police state!

In other words, 1997. I cant' wait until 2019 rolls around, and we finally get off world colonies, replicants, and umbrellas with LED handles.