Baby, It's Cold Outside: or, winter shennanigans in NYC

Ah, my lovelies, life has returned to normal after all the holiday jibba-jabba and the ensuing travel to exotic locales (Vegas and Boston). I've slept a lot for the past week, and now things are returning to their normal, frantically-paced rhythm. This week is outright insanity, and next week looks like it will be about the same, but my birthday is coming and I am gritting my teeth and determined to stay chipper.

The city is also settling back into its usual, bat-shit insane self. I've been seeing and hearing some interesting stuff lately, which I thought I'd share with you:

1) Last Wednesday, after a panicked morning of almost-guerrilla-style-because-it-was-so-low-budget filming for pornocracy, I was on my way to work at about noon. The subways at noon on a weekday are pretty deserted, so there weren't many people on the platform at 86th Street. I walked down toward the end for some seclusion, but as I walked I heard singing from behind me. I slowed down to hear it, then turned around. Two men, one on either side of the platform, were making music together. One, who I couldn't see because he was behind a column on my side of the station, had turned on some sort of background music, I'm assuming on a boombox, and had begun singing "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)" in a slow, jazzy style. Another man, on the uptown side of the station, stood and lazily beat the snare drum he was carrying, and sang back-up vocals. It was beautiful. Even as the trains came into the station and cut them off, they kept singing. I could see the backup singer's face through the flashing windows of the train.

2) A few days later, I was once again on my way to work, around 10:30. I'd ducked into a Starbucks, which I rarely do, to grab some coffee and yogurt for breakfast. I'd just been poked with needles, drained of blood, and told to take more medicine, so I was not oh so very happy. As I was stirring some milk into my cuppa Joe, "My Girl" by the Temptations came on the store's sound system. I don't know about you, but that song has got to be one of the best songs ever recorded, in my humble opinion. It gets me dancing, or swaying, or toe-tapping most the time, and it gets me singing every time. So there I was, singing away in Starbucks, stirring my coffee. One of the baristas came over to inspect the counter and supply situation; she was singing, too. We stood side by side for a moment, singing, before she stopped and looked at me with a huge smile. "You're singing, too!" We laughed and I left for work in a better mood than I'd been for days. Music really is amazing.

3) On Friday night, I watched "Bukowski: Born Into This," probably one of the best documentaries I've ever seen in my life. I was pretty drunk and I talked through a lot of it because I was in such a good mood, but the long stretches of Bukowski reading his poems jagged into me like a fishhook. I'd read Bukowski before, and I could recognize his genius, but sometimes the brutality, the alcoholism inherent in his poetry and especially in his novels, got to me and made it difficult. But hearing him, really, for the first time. His slow, nasal but very soft, very quiet, very measured voice, the rhythm of his poems, the bare and shocking truth of it. It really got into me. I spent the remainder of the night talking about what it is that makes real art, and how Bukowski's pain was the mark of art. And how the scary thing about Bukowski was that he was such a gentle man who longed only for peace and quiet and above all for love, but could not find it on this earth and so was turned into a nasty, violent, belligerent old man—and yet how, at any moment, he could burst into a beauty so fragile, in tears or honesty, that he could lure in a butterfly to his fingertip.

4) On Friday night, I went to see my favorite singer/songwriter/poet/novelist Simone Felice. He was doing his first ever solo acoustic set of whatever songs and poems and prose he felt like performing for us, in the tiny back room of the tiny Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. It was... Well, you know what, I'm not even going to try to describe it. Because some things are better kept locked up inside to keep warming you up than aired out so they can lose their flavor. Like soda in a bottle. I want this to stay bubbly in me. But, suffice it to say, all my musings on art and what makes it real were there in front of me, singing away and bringing the whole room together in a way that was stunning to experience. We sang together, and I got so deeply hooked that I almost had to get up and go cry in the bathroom for the beauty of it all, but I stayed where I was and soaked it up. Afterward, I gave Simone a vial of Fairy Dust and this poem by Bukowski. It's exactly like that soda-bottle feeling. It was the first full moon of the decade.

Tim Burton's Maleficent: or, yes, I have heard about this

Ok, it's taken me a little while to get to the point of addressing this, mainly because I was hoping I would settle on a more certain positive or negative reaction. But, after over a week sitting on the info, I'm still not sure how I feel. However, it seems like I'd better at least mention it because a lot of people I know have already asked me if I've heard about it. The answer is yes, I have heard that Tim Burton is hoping to make a movie about the story of Sleeping Beauty, told through the eyes of my fictional villainess hero, Maleficent.

Now, this could be cool. It could be real cool. I love Tim Burton, with his kooky goth-ness and penchant for curly-queues. Curly cues? Whatever. I love Nightmare Before Christmas, and Edward Scissorhands, and Beetlejuice, and Vincent, and, dear god, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and Sleepy Hollow, and Corpse Bride, and I even loved what he did with Sweeney Todd, although I wish he'd gotten someone to voice over Helena Bonham-Carter as Mrs. Lovett. But, I have to be honest here: I did not much appreciate his take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney could have been much better, and while I want to believe, I'm a little leery already about Alice in Wonderland. And while I'm trying to keep an open mind, I'm not sure how I feel about him doing Sleeping Beauty. More specifically, I'm not sure how I feel about him doing Maleficent.

Because here's what I'm seeing at the moment: crazy CGI, rather than that really cool two-dimensional animation from the original Disney movie, Johnny Depp playing some whack-o invented character (very well and very charmingly, I'm sure), and Helena Bonham Carter playing the title role. And. Well. Don't get me wrong. I love--LOVE--Johnny Depp. And I have a healthy appreciation for Helena, too. But frankly, I think the trio is getting a bit stale in Burton's films, and I very firmly believe that A) Maleficent does not NEED a back story, much less one with a whacky and charming JD character in it--she's the mistress of all fucking evil and how she got there is none of our damn business, and B) Helena does not have the chops. She was superb in Fight Club, and she made as creepy a Mrs. Lovett as could ever be imagined, but she ain't no Maleficent.

For one thing, where's the voice? How can you have Maleficent without The Voice? Eleanor Audly voiced the stepmother in Disney's Cinderella and Maleficent in Disney's Sleeping Beauty with such icy precision that no matter how awesome the visuals or amazing the casting, I simply will not be able to accept a Maleficent without her chilling vocals. She's been dead since 1991.

Furthermore, I repeat: Maleficent is the mistress of all evil. She IS. That's her deal. And much as I think the idea behind "Wicked" and whats-his-face's other books is fun and cute and all, I like Maleficent because she is NOT fun and cute. She is motherfucking terrifying and that's why we like her. As scary and cool as Cruella de Vil and Ursula are, they are sympathetic and kind of funny in their ways. Not Maleficent. She is so scary because she HAS no back story, no quirks, no frailty. She's just evil and seems as ancient and unsympathetic as whatever it is that keeps us awake at night. And I don't really want anyone inventing more. My imagination is good enough for me.

But here's the thing that is really irking me. Maleficent is a badass character. But she's just that: a character, completely invented as she is by Disney. In the original story of Sleeping Beauty, she isn't Maleficent at all, she's just an evil/pissed off/badly numbered (13th) fairy (depending on your story book) who doesn't get invited to the party and gets really ticked off about it. Disney made Maleficent, and as far as I'm concerned she's just as awesome as she can be, as is. I would far rather see Tim Burton do his own version of Sleeping Beauty using his vast imagination and interpreting it as he wishes using his own characters. The story is simple. It's basically a blank canvas. Have at! But don't use someone else's invention as a springboard.

Because I know in Tim Burton's head there are some really dark and really, really cool unexplored territories that Maleficent could inhabit quite neatly. But the recent bent of his films has been so full of whimsy and crowd-pleasing that I can't be sure he'll take her there. I'd rather he invent a whole new world to take us to and put someone that's not exactly Maleficent into it.

But, then, I have to admit... All this press is teaching people how to spell her name. And that's pretty cool.

Ponderings: or, possibly I am now a criminal

I... have not blogged.... for a week. And so now, it's time to blog. And yet here I am on Monday morning with a frustrating lack of things happening in my brain. I tried to Gchat a moment ago and nothing happened. Just no words.
Sooooo....
I just wrote this article for Whack! which was horrendously underdeveloped and kind of badly put together in the first place, but which I didn't have enough time to fix. And which I feel really weird about having written. Because in the article I make a case for people being less hysterically panicky about child molesters, aka sex offenders.
Because, here's the thing, I'm not in any way condoning really messed up things that people might do to children. We're not living in a day and age where forcing a prepubsecent child into a sexual situation is ok. I don't know that there would ever be a day or age where that would be ok. It skews the child's understanding of sex and what it means, turns it into a dark and painful thing rather than a joy, as it should be. Warps the growing-up process. Hurts everyone involved. It's wrong.
But I also think that because as a culture we're so terrified of the prospect, we've also gone a bit overboard with our definition of it and our desire to catch the bad guys responsible. I mean, I understand that the age of consent is high in most industrialized countries in hopes of preventing young people from being taken advantage of by older people. But there was a kid recently locked up for TEN YEARS on a statutory rape charge, because when he was seventeen he had oral sex with a fifteen year old.
That's not ok with me. He didn't really do anything wrong. Sure, she was fifteen and probably didn't really know what she was doing in the grand scheme of things, but, A) he was seventeen and he probably didn't really know either, and B) nobody EVER really knows, and C) he was only two years older! That is not the same as 35 year old man preying on a five year old child. It's not the same at all. And yet this guy will be forever labeled a sex offender. His life is ruined. For no good reason.
Consider the fact that there are cops posted to the ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Taskforce who are undergoing serious emotional trauma because of the things they're forced to see at work. Consider that there are cops across the country posing online as young kids or the guardians thereof, offering sex with minors to perverts online. Consider that guys responding to these offers are often arrested without having committed a crime.
Consider that we are so terrified of child molestation that we get suspicious of any adult male near our kids. If a kid falls on the playground and a man is there to help them up and dust them off, we think "pervert" instead of "helpful." It's weird, isn't it?
And, in another vein but still under the general premise of this conversation, consider the fact that a fifteen year old "girl" in this day and age has probably been getting her period for three or more years, developed a fully functional adult body, and is horny as all hell. She is probably not really mature enough to understand or interpret her horniness adequately, but those are the facts.
Also consider that there is a thriving industry based on "barely legal" female porn performers who 'just turned eighteen.' Many of these girls might not be eighteen yet, and many others are barely over the line. It's ok to jerk off to them, though, because they're 'legal.'
Furthermore, consider that as animals, we are biologically programmed to find young adults attractive. Younger females tend to be healthier and more able to have healthy babies. Younger men tend to have more energy, be faster and stronger and more able to bring home the bacon. While TOO young is obviously not ok from a moral, social, OR biological standpoint, the fact that lots of guys get off to 'barely legal' porn isn't so much gross as biologically expected.
Of course there's a line between what's ok and what's not, but it seems to me that we are so terrified of people crossing it that we've made the line a thin, solid black one separating the adults from the children in a world where it's a much more grey, fuzzy line that covers a whole lot of territory.
And I think we need to figure out a way to be less panicky and more comprehensive about it. I don't have any anwers to the problem, but it's been on my mind and it bugs me.

Ok. So that's the premise. Does this make me a bad person?

Another Story and Another Column: or, shameless self-promotion

In case ANYONE reading this hasn't gotten an e-mail, tweet, FB post, or MySpace bulletin yet... I have two publications to show for one week, NOT on Whack! Magazine! Check it!

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: The Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer: Column Two: Desensitization

And:

The Whiskey Dregs: Short Stories: The Old Goat Man

Now that that's over with, I've been considering the merit or not of the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are Movie. I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it looks like a great film so far, and I have the utmost respect for Spike Jonze, as a director, as well as for the fact that Maurice Sendak's wishes are being realized by him directing this movie. He apparently once said that the only way he'd agree to his baby being turned into a movie would be if it were to be directed by Jonze.

So that's all well and good.

But still. It irks me on a number of levels. I'm always hesitant to see a book turned into a movie, particularly if it's one I grew up with. But this one bothers me more than others. For one thing, the book is so beloved by so many, not for the merits of its movie-length plot, but for its sparseness. It's a book with so little background and so little development of the plot that one must bring one's own imagination and experience to it in order to make the story whole. And one's own story must be a good one to match the incredible possibilities and the astounding artwork. And that brings the best of the imagination of everyone who reads it.

Of course I appreciate Spike Jonze's vision, and I think his version of the story will probably be one that will be eminently artistic and enjoyable. But. It's still HIS. From the time this movie comes out, every kid who's seen the movie (there will be MANY) will bring with him Spike Jonze's idea of the story, the characters, the background, the sounds, the sights we don't get to see in the pages. And that bothers me with this particular book because it has always been the opposite of a fleshed-out, pre-imagined story. And now it will be just like Harry Potter or Twilight or The Lord of the Rings. Well, ok, not JUST like them, but one person's vision of it will come to dominate the entire story, book, movie, idea. And I don't like that.

Furthermore, I feel like this movie was cooked up by some producers who looked at my very specific part of my very specific generation. They looked at the books we love, the music we love, the directors we love, and the type of movies we love, and then they said, "You know what would be perfect? Turning 'Where the Wild Things Are' into a live-action style movie and getting Spike Jonze to direct, the singer from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to come up with the soundtrack, and the Arcade Fire to let us use their anthem about growing up in the trailer. The twenty-somethings will line up around the block to see it, and they'll bring their kids! We can't lose! It's a money-making machine!"

I might be totally wrong about that. It's just as likely (and I've obviously done no research about it) that someone really really loved the book and really really loved Spike Jonze and The Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and thought that together they would make a beautiful piece of art. And you know, they probably will. But I get this feeling that I'm being led by the nose because being who I am, at this point in my life, at this moment in time (post-college fugue, frustrated creative visions, yearning for childhood feelings, wanting to be swept away to a better world without a recession or even money), I HAVE to love it. I don't like being led by the nose, even if the people at the other end of the leash are creative geniuses.

I dunno. I guess it just seems contrived to me, and too much awesome in one place.

I'll probably end up seeing it and loving it, but hating myself for it the whole time. Grumble.

What do you guys think? Support it? Love it? Hate it? Meh?

In other news: my coworker Maribeth saw John Turturro on the street today. I am way jealous. This lady has never even SEEN The Big Lebowski! Not fair.

But I DID see this after leaving work: a mid-twenties white guy sitting in traffic in a very nice Chrysler convertible, with the top down in 50 degree weather, smoking a cigar, and listening to "With Or Without You" at full volume. Way to go, guy, for blasting the music you REALLY love.

The kind of morning I have to write about: or, surreal as all hell...

I won't pretend to pass this off as a post that has anything to do with any kind of blog theme. Truth is, I haven't had much time for those lately, and even when I do I've been so brain dead from all my other projects that I can't come up with anything, and I've been so wrapped up in my work and thoughts that I haven't been paying much attention to what's going on around me. So the blog has been dry.

But then, this morning, some cosmic ray or something showed up in my life. When I woke up I was in the midst of a dream involving me, my older sister, my father, and some other random people being stranded on a tropical island of some sort and seeking shelter as a storm approached. We had to wade through a swamp, past a calmly dozing row of gigantic crocodiles, and when we hit land I turned around to realize that my father had been eaten by one of them while pushing my sister out of the way. The rest of us sat to discuss what to do from there, the storm suddenly hit and we all had to run for cover to avoid being hit by lightning. There was some sort of massive half-built structure that we aimed for until we realized that it had no roof, so we had to alter our course for the trees ahead as the wind whipped up around us and the rain started pelting down. Just then I woke up, but wanted desperately to go back to sleep so I could see what would happen next. It was like a movie.

I got up and ran around crazily to get ready for work, somehow not having time for breakfast, but packing a huge lunch/dinner since I have my first session of a proofreading and copy editing class tonight at City College - my first in a series leading up to a Certificate in Publishing - and I won't have any time for dinner. So anyway, I started walking to the train very fast and heard a honk from a nearby car as it goes through an intersection. I assumed the driver was warning whoever might be at the stop sign going the other way that he was coming, but as he got up closer to me he slowed down and honked again. Ugh. Annoying. Eventually he took off again and I kept walking, only to catch up to him again as he was stopped further up the street at a red light. At which point he started shouting at me out of the window. What a nice guy. My name, however, is not "Mami."

So I got to the station right on time, only to find that my train had already passed. Way to go, MTA. Early trains are just as bad for most of us as late trains, you know. Running ahead of schedule will NOT make us like you more.

Anyway, I finally boarded a 2 train and found a spot next to an old, very angry looking Spanish woman who smelled like she was wearing an adult diaper, and that diaper was probably about due for a change. At Grand Concourse/149th I switched to the 4 train, which took its sweet time coming. In the meantime, I found a spot to stand right under the broken pipe that leaks water down into the train station all day every day, and wondered how long it would be before the ceiling caved in. I glanced down the platform to see a man with a big belly standing on the wrong side of the platform, shirtless, and talking to himself.

When the train finally came, I found a spot to stand right where a guy got on at the next stop, mumbling to himself. Great. Just what I needed. Turned out, this guy was a poet who had self-published 3 books and was selling them for $5 a piece on the subway. He spouted off some of his poetry, and it was GOOD. Not Pullitzer prize winning material, but good. I'd have bought a book if I'd had a $5 bill on me, but alas. One poem I remember is:

"The Quickest Way to Get to Riker's Island:
Take the D express train
Down to 34th Street,
And throw a brick,
Through the Macy's plate glass window."

Cute, right? So anyway, I was watching him walk down the car, selling his books and spitting poetry, and noticed as he passed a gentleman sitting, fast asleep, on one of the bench seats. He had that skin condition, the name of which always eludes me, in which his pigmentation varies in big blotches all over from black to pink. His mouth and chin and the tip of his nose were pinkish white, as was the skin around one eye, while the rest of his head was deep chocolate brown. The patterns gave him the appearance of having a muzzle, or a snout. But he looked peaceful. I noticed other people on the train looking at him, and I couldn't blame them--he was asleep after all, so he had no idea we were staring, and he was a singularly interesting looking person. I wondered if he was only pretending to be asleep to avoid the stares. Or if he was so used to them that he could relax enough on the train enough to pass out.

I got to work early, somehow, after being convinced I was late the whole way from the train. When I got in, the phone immediately started ringing and it's hardly stopped since, but I was told first thing by the guy who brings the newspapers to us on the second floor that our front desk man for the building, Steve, who has been a fixture of my mornings for 2 years now, died of a heart attack when coming up out of the subway on his way home last night. He was 54.

It struck me. Wow. No retirement party. No easy golden years. This guy who kept the building running, honestly, just stopped.

For some reason, every one of the weird events of this morning has just struck me as something significant. It's made me think about all the remarkable and weird things I've seen and done in my life. How everyone has these stories. How any moment, those stories could be silenced. It makes me want to call my parents and every person I love.

And of course it makes me want to blog.

On being a "writer"...

I think it's one of the perpetual conditions of most creative people--and I like to think particularly the geniuses because that would confer a lot of glory to me--to be deeply insecure, anxious, passionately devoted to self-loathing, moody, and terrible at self-promotion. Writers in particular, or at least the ones I know, generally think that they suck, that everything they do is sub-par, and that making their point through their flawed but genuine contributions to the existant body of writing is infinitely preferable to communicating with the outside world directly by, say, talking. I assume all these things to be true because they pretty much encapsulate the way I see things from the perspective of a writer. Sure I can be outgoing and fun-loving and confident with my friends or at a bar, but when it comes to showing a professional face as a writer, I either tend to laugh the idea off ("I'm not a writer! I WANT to be a writer! But I'm not a writer! It'll never happen!") or cringe, blush, and back away, mumbling some self-deprecating nonsense about how my stuff isn't very good. I hate trying to present myself as someone who knows anything about writing, much less the topics I write about, and even less about what the hell it is I'm trying to do by writing anything about them in the first place.

And yet, as a ball of nerves with the confidence of a particularly timid country mouse, I have to try to get myself published. In order to do this, and depending on the type of writing being put out, I have to learn to overcome my fears of exposure to do any number or combination of the following things, according to all the forums, columns, advice giving articles, and writer's salons I 've been frequenting lately for advice on the writing and publishing processes: develop a strong platform for each project so that you know exactly what it is you want to say and to whom; find the audience you want and turn that audience into a dedicated readership willing to buy and read anything you publish; develop professional liasons with as many people as humanly possible in the publishing, publicity, and reviewing worlds; write a 40-60 page book proposal with a complete table of contents, sample chapters, and a detailed description of how you will market your project; pitch an idea to and editor by throwing the names of all your publications and people willing to read, review, and blurb your project; attend every publishing event possible to make friends and network with other publishing people; stalk the agent and publicist you want on Twitter, Facebook, Google, and in the pages of every book he/she has ever worked on so that when you pitch it you will know exactly what that agent is looking to represent; find and pay your own publicist; clean up any and all internet presence you already have so that no evidence of your past usage of bad grammar exists anywhere online; somehow get yourself on the roster for public speaking events to add to your CV; develop a CV; demonstrate self confidence to everyone you meet so they'll think you're hip and want to read your work.

There are more. Lots more. Nowhere in there does it say "Write a kickass piece of something or other and let people read it."

Nowhere in there is there a mention of anyone helping you or giving you any credit as a creative individual who might not be The Next Big Thing.

I know the current American reading climate has moved away from fiction and poetry, the genres in which writers are mostly allowed to be eccentric weirdos who wear flannel and live in log cabins in the woods and pee themselves while speaking in public, but as one of those eccentrics... That list up there... I'm absolutely terrified.

I mean it's daunting enough to just write something that bares your very private layers of inner soul and then let somebody see it and judge it and make their assumptions about you based on it. It's soul-freezingly scary to try to shout out your creative vision in the face of the fast-moving, fast-forgetting, writhing, blogging, tweeting mass of the digital age of too-much-information and little appreciation for anything. The quivering hulk of monster that is Your Competition, the reek of its hungry but very picky breath, is enough to turn away even the most courageous.

But the idea of trying to market myself to a world that has no reason to care unless I personally make it care? Or of trying to scrounge up the money to pay a publicist that can actually get me a speaking engagement somewhere other than soapbox in Union Square? Or of "building an online following" somehow by being... I don't know... magically endowed with minion-creation capacities? How the hell am I, this little teeny self-mutilating blob of anxiety and too-high personal expectations, supposed to accomplish the sky-scraper-high list of accomplishments before even finishing my book?

I might as well just pee myself now, in front of all of you, turn off the computer, curl into a ball, and settle into my receptionist-for-a-living lifestyle. Or go back to school to become a nurse.

Shit.

Moon explody and other ridiculous bullshit...

I'm having trouble figuring out how to start this post. My Ridiculous Bullshit-O-Meter is way up past the top of its Bullshit Measuring capacities, and I'm just so... I dunno, disappointed? Apalled? Amused? Terrified?

Here's the thing. This - NASA'S Mission to Bomb the Moon - is a real headline. As are all the others like it. As is the actual mission. I haven't exhaustively researched the entire plan beyond reading a bunch of articles online, so I suppose there's a chance (please, God, please) that this is a hoax, but I just can't bring myself to really look too far into this. It's just too ridiculous.

Here's the idea: NASA is hoping to put people on the moon again in 2018, to establish a base there as a launch pad for explorations to Mars and so on and so forth. Which I suppose is a commendable enough goal, albeit one that there are major political and practical reasons to hesitate before supporting. Before they send some of our red white and blue brothers up there, though, they want to check out what kinds of possible natural resources they might have available to them when they get there. They're hoping, mainly, to find some water, which they think might possibly be hidden at the north and/or south poles of the moon, left over from icy comets and such that have left giant craters there in the cold and the dark.

So, in order to determine if there's water at or near the surface, NASA is going to send up a spacecraft to orbit the moon for a few months - for the purposes of look for an exact target for the Centaur rocket that they will then fire. At the moon. At the speed of a bullet.

They're expecting the resultant cloud of debris sent up from the impact to fan out for considerable miles from the moon's surface - they're thinking it will be visible from earth - and then they're going to send in a "shepherding spacecraft [which] will follow close behind, taking pictures and analysing the ejected debris as it looks for evidence of water," very much in the style of, oh, I don't know, a Star Wars video game where you have to fly through a field of debris in your little spaceship.

Yes. That's the plan. We're going to bomb. The MOON. In the name of science! And nationalism! And showing those Communists who's got the best bombs and space program! ...oh, wait, we're NOT in the Cold War anymore? The Russians aren't communists? Well, shit... Um... I guess we can show the North Koreans, right? We're still not into them, right? Sure, yeah, let's do it! Show that Kim Jong Sick guy what's what, huh? Show him the moon BELONGS to US! Cause we said so!

I'll give you guys three guesses as to who signed this one into action. That's right, kiddies, it was none other than our favorite former president, George W. "You Had Me At Bomb" Bush. I'm not sure if he was in on the actual planning of the bombing portion of this operation, but my gut instincts tell me he was at least gung-ho into it when he heard explosions were involved.

While I do have to admit that the idea of looking up into the night sky and seeing a bomb going off on the moon is pretty damn cool, I also just... I can't... It's so ridiculous! I mean, can you really honestly tell me that this is the most efficient and responsible way to go about this? Can someone from NASA please explain to me, in a calm and steady voice and not while panting with little-boy enthusiasm over sending a bomb into the cosmos, why this blatant show of overzealous Hollywood weapons-mongering was chosen as the best course of action to determine whether there might be water on the moon? It's going to take a lot of convincing for me to believe that this wasn't just a bunch of adolescent males playing video games late at night after drinking way too much Mountain Dew and going, "Dude, you know what would be so cool to do?"

Sure, I can see how not actually having to set anything down on the moon's surface in a responsible, non-pyrotechnic way could be more difficult and expensive than using a bomb, but really, think about this. Here's NASA, a group of scientists with a huge budget who like sending large white phallic things into space using huge amounts of energy and taxpayer money, basically showing off as much as possible, making plans to colonize the moon. Not that that's not a worthy goal, especially if we're looking to branch out to study other planets, and especially if someday we might have to use other planets to survive. But, here's the hangup I have:

I saw a man, an American man, on the train yesterday, with a copy of a newspaper article on a sign board about how he'd been burned by acid. I couldn't understand what he was saying, because he basically had no lips or tongue left. His ears were little misshapen buds on either side of his head, his nose was a little nubbin holding up his sunglasses, which I'm assuming were there to hide the disfigurement of his eyes. His hands and arms were horribly mangled. He was asking everyone to spare some change to help him pay for his medical expenses and reconstructive surgery (I think, anyway - again, I couldn't hear him well, but he might have just been begging for change because I'm sure he can't get much of a job looking like he does).

Let me be perfectly clear: this man was burned so horribly by acid that he has to wear sunglasses to keep from upsetting people. He has no LIPS. He is an American. He cannot afford to pay his medical bills and apparently nobody will HELP him except for strangers on the subway.

And yet, we can bomb the moon to look for water. Now do you see why I just can't get behind this?

Snowflakes and geriatric gunmen...

I'm having a strangely racially charged week.

Yesterday, I was walking up Melrose Avenue near my house, on my way home from meeting with an artist and grabbing a few things at the grocery store in the midst of a desperate pee-haze. (You know, the total inability to concentrate on anything because of how badly you have to pee? It had been four hours and I was getting desperate. I went on a mad dash through that grocery store, man.) I was barreling down the sidewalk at quite a clip, focused on getting to my place and putting down my bags, when a nicely dressed older black man walked by: "Good evening, beautiful," he said, then continued on his way. No big deal. I smiled a little at him and kept walking. I've gotten used to the occasional comment, particularly when on Melrose. The tone of most of them is of appreciation, a little lewdness, but whatever. I mean, I look at people on the street, and I usually wouldn't have audacity to say anything to someone I found attractive, but that's really on me for being shy. I don't mind people telling me I look good, so long as they're not mean, overtly rude, or in some way hindering my progress down the sidewalk.

About a block later, two guys came out of a store and took up positions on the sidewalk directly in front of me, walking verrrry slowly. They were both black, really tall, dressed nicely, and obviously in no hurry to get anywhere. I, on the other hand, was desperate to get to my bathroom, so I moved up on the outside to scurry around them. As I drew up next to them, we walked three abreast for a few seconds, and I noticed the guy closer to me do a very conspicuous up-and-down once over of me. Again, this didn't bother me, since he wasn't trying to touch me or stop me in pursuit of relief.

But then, as I started to pull away in front, he said very quietly: "Hey, snowflake." It was an almost monotone, loud enough for me to hear it but not a shout for others to hear. I couldn't quite tell if it was a flat-out racial slur meant to hurt my feelings, or some sort of hurtful come-on. Either way, I had no idea what to do.

What I wanted to do was stop, wheel around, and lay on some really biting insult, or at least a witty reprimand for his behavior. Something that just fed his own medicine back to him. But, as is my wont, I couldn't come up with anything because my brain had shut down when he'd said it in the first place. I could have turned and blatantly glared at him, but then other people might have thought I was the bigot.

So I settled for just ignoring him and walking away a little faster. The comment itself didn't bother me too terribly much - not everybody can be nice all the time, and it really has nothing to do with me. But the more I thought about it, the more amazed I became. That's the first time anyone has ever said something overtly and meanly racist to me, or at least the first time it's been overt enough that I noticed it. I can be pretty spacey on the street sometimes.

But, really, I've been in the minority demographically in every neighborhood I've lived in since high school. That's eight years, baby. During college I was living in the Bronx, then I went to the reservation for a year, and then even in Chicago I was living in the gayest neighborhood in the city. Then I came back to New York, where I've lived in Harlem and now the Bronx again. And sure, I've gotten some weird looks and some rude stares, and sure I've heard people giggle as I walk by, and sure I get comments on my ass from time to time, but I've never had someone just come out and tell me before that they didn't like me for my white skin. It's weird. I don't know if that's a testament to people generally being nice, or how far we still have to go. I mean, imagine the uproar if a black person were walking down the street in TriBeCa and somebody made a snide remark about his/her race. Can you imagine? It'd be big news. Nobody can do that these days. We've come pretty far on that front.

But hey, I'm just whitey. Little pale chick in the Bronx. Fair game, right? After all, I'm encroaching on someone else's territory. This isn't my hood. Right? On the one hand I can understand frustration and even people vaguely disliking me on the street. I really AM a representative of my race, and as such, can be perceived as a harbinger of higher rent, property values skyrocketing, Starbucks on the corner where Cookie's used to be. People who can't afford to pay out the nose for the posh new SoBro neighborhood could, in ten years, be forced to move even further from the city because of people just like me. So, sure, if someone sees me coming and feels a little ping of mistrust, there's nothing I can do about that.

But, wait! What the hell? What's going on here, is this some weird urban mutation of Stockholm Syndrome? Bullshit! Nobody in this country should ever be made to feel unwelcome ANYWHERE. I mean, with the possible exception of certain situations, like a woman in a cocktail dress and stilettos wandering into a subway homeless camp. But in public? On the street? In daylight? I don't give a shit if you think you know something about me because of how I look, it doesn't give you the right to bother me with your prejudice. That's not right. I have as much of a right to live in the South Bronx as anybody else and fuck you for having an issue with where I make my home. I LIKE my neighborhood. I shop there, I'm probably going to join the co-op there. I contribute. I pay taxes.

I should've just as quietly and calmly intoned: "Darkie" at that guy. A term so antiquated and ridiculous it would either have turned on a lightbulb over his head about how equally ridiculous it was for him to be mean to me, or thrown him into a rage and turned me into a victim of a hate crime. But at least I'd have felt better.

As it is, I'm just left scratching my head about how to feel.

So I come to work today and see the front page of the Wall Street Journal: "White Supremacist Suspected in Shooting at Holocaust Museum." And a picture of an 88-year-old man being led away in cuffs for fatally shooting a security officer at the Holocaust Museum in DC. Come ON, people. This would be ludicrous, if someone hadn't been killed, and it's just heartbreakingly sad as it is. Can you imagine, in the goldest of your golden years, at 88 years of age, being so filled with hatred for other people just because they don't have the same heritage as you? Forget rent hikes, forget property values, forget paying taxes. Here's a man who, overcoming the many obstacles to so doing, has survived for nearly nine decades on this war-torn planet, who one would hope would be wearing slippers on his porch and enjoying a nice Scotch while his dog sleeps on his lap, has instead let himself fall so deeply into arbitrary malice that he's going to go out this way? This is why people calling each other names on the street is so bad.

It's not just an issue of someone being rude, it's an issue of teaching people to live their lives in love with the world and the people in it. The world might be a fucked up place in a whole lot of basic ways, but the last thing it needs is those of us living in the wealthiest, most bountiful and diverse place in the world to spend their days eyeing each other with suspicion and seething hatred. Life is way, way, way too short to spend it feeling bad about differences that only run skin deep, and even about differences that run deeper. So people look different, think differently. So what? Calm down, people. Take an afternoon off. Go to the park. Watch some squirrels playing. Look into the eyes of a carriage horse. Look into the eyes of someone on the street with love, compassion, and the assurance that the two of you are composed of the same stuff and are the results of the same millions of years of diligent evolution and the lucky winners of the prize of capitalizing upon the tiny, infinitessimal chance that you could both have been formed of non-living matter in order to now be standing there, facing each other, having survived so long and come so far. It's incredible, isn't it? It's amazing when you look out into the street, or into space, to realize the chances of you being where you are right now, next to the person beside you, no matter what he looks like or where he comes from. Just. Calm down.

...every time a rug is micturated upon in this fair city...

Holy crap people! Well, holy urine, I guess. NASA has successfully purified human urine into drinkable water. They're celebrating by drinking pee on the Space Station and at NASA. There's a little blurb on it in the New York Times.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this a gigantic long-jump style leap toward solving drinking water problesm here on our home planet? I mean, great that the astronauts (and one cosmonaut) are swallowing their own swill and all, but shouldn't this be a huge story for places like Africa and overpopulated regions of... well... everywhere? Isn't the freshwater crisis like a humongous gigantic bomb of a story? Shouldn't we be dancing in the streets now that we can all drink our pee and not worry so much?

...Oh, wait. I forgot. No, the freshwater crisis ISN'T a big story, even though it's made huge headlines and is a horrible fucking calamity that people need to be made aware of and forced to act upon immediately so save us all from horrible parched deaths. Because people don't want to hear about it. And drinking pee? Well by George, that's just gross, folks. Way too disgusting to be real, much less a viable solution to a worldwide problem! Heck, it's even worse than that whoosiewhatsit liberal hippie notion of using methane as a renewable energy source! Hogwash! That's just disgusting.

Well, dammit, people, I'M excited! Let's go dance in the streets anyway. Start a trend. And drink our own pee.

Continuing with all the problems I see inherent in the programming of combat robots to have 'functional morality'...

Putting aside the very real difficulties in the mere logistics of trying to program a wartime 'morality' into a machine for a moment, I find a much deeper issue with the moral questions inherent in trying to make a machine act as a human would in such an extreme situation as a war zone, in the first place. What does this say about us, our feelings toward robots and the wars we want to put them in? What would be the point of using robots instead of soldiers in the first place?

Ostensibly, I'm sure, the idea would be that using robots, we could spare the lives of our soldiers, which are worth immeasurably more to us on an emotional level than the thousands and millions of dollars we'd have poured into robot soldiers. But, let's step back for a minute and look at the bigger picture, which will tell us in no uncertain terms that most wars are fought for money these days anyway, and that in the grand scheme of things, human life has never stood up to the powers that be trying to get to the bottom line. Simply through experience, I think we can make the assumption that a military engineer saying he's concerned with protecting human life is kind of like a slave owner saying he believes that all men are created equal. It sounds nice, and we want to believe it, but there's something else going on there. In this case, it seems to me that the something else goes along the lines of: "Dude, let's make a super-powered robot with awesome firepower capabilities to do our work for us!"

Not exactly an irresponsible idea, given that we very well could save human lives with these things. But, given that they're to be 'super-powered robots with awesome firepower capabilities' (according to me), we do not seem to be too worried about anybody's lives but our guys'. We seem to want to kill the crap out of anybody who could be on the other side. Which was all well and good for, you know, the Mongol hordes, but in this day and age, a bit more forebearance and good judgment is required. Good MORAL judgment, that is, which I've already posited, is simply out of the reach of robot soliders, no matter how well-programmed. They're not people, and yes, that's the whole point, but if they can't actually understand the morality we've programmed into them, they can't be expected to use it discerningly to protect innocent lives on both sides. They're just killing machines.

So, if we can take my superior reasoning skills here as scientific fact (which we obviously can), and the robots are not going to save the lives of the innocent, nor are they really at their root being used to save our guys, then what are they for? Besides blowing things up in a science-fiction-awesome way?

I know I'm cynical and will go to almost any length to discredit robots, but honestly, regardless of cynicism, doesn't the idea of a super-powered robot with a very non-functional morality and the ability to kill lots of people in place of soldiers that have historically been trained to do that job, smell just a bit like a placeholder? Doesn't it seem like the robot here would be just an agent that, because it is not technically alive or sentient or capable of understanding the morality with which we have endowed it, can be used to absolve ourselves of all moral culpability for the destruction it will cause? Sure, we made it, and sure, we programmed it, and sure, we sent it into that town with those rocket-launchers, but we didn't actually kill all those people. We can't be held morally responsible if it screwed up. We can't be held morally responsible if it didn't.

This isn't to say that we wouldn't be responsible in other ways, as the government/military behind combat robots would be forced to accept responsibility in a practical sense, but it would sure make us feel better knowing that the agents of destruction we sent in and who blew things up and who got blown up weren't people with a moral responsibility to other people. They're just robots! They must've malfunctioned or something, who knows! But hey, we didn't lose any men, and that's great, right? More champagne!

...see the sliminess in there? I guess I had to dig for it but I think it's just as plain as any gigantic rotting tuber when you find it...

More tomorrow.

Moral machines.

I spent a lot of time in college in Philosophy classes. So much time, in fact, that in my senior year I realized that if I took just one more course, I'd have a minor. So I did, and now I do. Philosophy courses at a Jesuit university tend to have a very religious and often moralistic bent, so I had opted mostly for fun, un-think-y classes like Native American Philosophy and Buddhist Philosophy, which pretty much parroted the ideas I already had about the nature of morality and human nature. But then, when I decided to take the plunge for the minor, the only class I could fit into my schedule that would qualify me was an intensely think-y class called Philosophy of Human Nature. I had a really tough time in that class because we kept bringing up questions that to me were simply preposterous and therefore not worth our time. The subject matter ranged from the agency of the human mind (if we took this person's brain and put it in that person's body, whose personality would be the result? where is the personhood of the person? etc) and the possible person-hood of artificial intelligence. I simply couldnt' see a situation in which these questions would actually become applicable, so I almost refused to do well in the class.

Well, that sure came around to bite me in the ass. I can't seem to formulate proper arguments, or bring up the necessary groundwork of philosophy that has already been laid by hundreds of years of moral philosophizing. Serves me right, I guess. I've been trying to piece together what I have to say about the article I linked to on Saturday about the difficulties that military engineers are having with programming morality into robots. I've been giving the matter some thought, have made extensive notes, and even tried to have a calm and rational out-loud discussion with Connor about it. I had hoped, through these processes, to cement a solid idea of just what it is about the idea of morally reasoning combat robots that makes me want to cry. But instead I realized that, far from reaching one solid conclusion, I have more of a tendency to fly into fits of adrenaline-fueled word-flinging that doesn't make sense. I know why I feel the way I do, but I feel it so passionately that I have difficulty articulating. So. I'm going to try to write down just one of the arguments here, to avoid rambling, ranting, and crying.

Ahem.

After some horrendous errors in the past two years in which combat robots opened fire inexplicably on 'friendly' troops, engineers and programmers have decided it might be a good idea to try to equip battle bots with a "functional morality." They are hoping to successfully use a combination of programming techniques to accomplish this goal: "top down" programming would provide the machine with a set of absolute rules (a la "I, Robot") that could not be undermined, while "bottom up" learning would be implemented, enabling the robot to apply rules to new and changing situations and to learn from past experience (Wall-E, you little bastard). This, scientists hope, would make the robots doing our slaughtering for us more capable to deal with the unexpected and morally dubious realities of war zones, while operating on a basic set of principles that would guide them in decision-making.

Lest you think this sounds cool, and without even trying to describe the creepy-crawly sensation I get when I think of robots 'learning from experience,' let me point out a few things that I know about war zones, gleaned from the watching of several war movies and the reading of several similar books. As they say, "War is Hell," and believe it or not, they say it for a reason. And what can you expect from Hell but a complete upending of morality? While might be the place to find some of the most black and white examples of human morality in action, it is also the place where normal morality often goes totally grey, gets turned on its head, and does breakdance spins. In a war zone, "the innocent" become "the enemy," "children" become "soldiers," "machine gun fire" can be termed "friendly fire," and a zillion other f-ed up things can and do go wrong every moment, turning every situation into a scene of horror that moral philosophers would pee their pants to think of. Particularly in modern war zones, where the enemy is often never seen and thus never 100% identifiable as the enemy, where soldiers fight over causes they hardly understand, and where we're trying to send in ROBOTS to do our bidding, for God's sake, to say that a "functional morality" is the end goal seems a little simple-minded. What could the basic tenets, the basic system of rules in the "top down" model possibly be?

If we're going for a general human morality to implement here, or to form as a structure for the robot rules, the author of our article points out that "there is no clear task specification for general moral behavior, nor is there a single answer to the question of whose morality or what morality should be implemented in AI," and he has a good point. But even if we were to aim for the very most general set of rules that applies to as much of the human population's idea of moral behavior worldwide, we'd be screwed. By its very nature, the set of morals we'd have to instill in a combat robot would be sideways from the beginning. "Do not kill"? Doesn't apply. "Do not kill the innocent"? What constitutes innocent when you're taking over a city full of people who would gladly slaughter you and your entire culture? "Do not kill children"? Modern Africa has proven that children can be just as ruthless as adults. ...And on and on we go.

Human beings, who ostensibly have a much more refined sense of right and wrong, produced organically after years of learning through trial and error, who have a mortal fear of reprisal for acting immorally, and whose pasts are filled with genuine decision-making incidents, still have plenty of trouble determining how to behave morally in war times. We've all seen pictures of Abu Ghraib. So then, in all our vast experience with morality, how can we expect a machine, put together and programmed by us and then taught how to react to situations in very controlled lab environments, to make better decisions than we do? And given their superior speed, agility, and strength (which supposedly is why we'd be using them in the first place - not to give ourselves the impression that WE are not the ones doing the killing and therefore not responsible for it... but that's another argument. Maybe tomorrow.), if these robots do make bad decisions based on their imperfect senses of morality, they have a lot more capability for causing serious destruction.

I have to get going because the gallery is apparently closing up early today, but I will contineu with a much more (I hope) nuanced and deeper discussion of why this is balls to the wall batshit fucking insane tomorrow.

On a lighter note...

...I hope to continue my ranting about the reasons behind my fear and loathing of robots soon, but today my head is just not into working with big ideas. I think I may have burned my brain out by being too busy earlier in the week and then put out the fire last night with whiskey. Today I'm having a few cinders spark up and a little smoke puffing up now and then, but I just don't have the willpower to try to kindle it back up into a real fire.

So instead, I've been perusing this Aussie guy's blog. I am getting a real kick out of it. He has a random sense of humor that reminds me very very strongly of my friend's, and weirdly enough that friend lived in Australia for a while. What a happy coincidence.

However, I have a bit of a bone to pick and I'm considering commenting on his page to draw his attention the fallacy of his piece on what he would do if he had a monkey. Now, I actually know a suprisingly large number of people who harbor this same dream of monkey ownership. Granted, I believe I know a larger than average group of openly insane people, but any time that it is brought up, I feel a need to represent the side of sanity. Which, of course, is anti-monkey ownership.

Because, seriously, monkeys? They might be cute in the same semi-human way that makes dogs in little booties and shirts kind of sweet looking, but also creepy. These are creatures who don't need, nor want, anthropomorphizing. They're not people. But they're just enough like us to creep us out. Which makes me hesitant to think of them as pets. They have little... faces. Like ours. Many of those faces are hairless, like ours. Expressive eyes. HANDS. And toe-thumbs and apposable tails, which make them more agile and dextrous than we could ever be. And because they're so smart (like us), they are crafty as hell, and sneaky, and when you add intelligence to a dextrous, agile mix... It gets scary.

But beyond that, even if you don't find their humanoid appearance and smartnessa nd dexterity a little threatening, there's the well-known fact that they are like us in another important way, which is to say very social, which is to say... needy as all get out. They need to be played with constantly or they get bored and start flinging shit (or whatever else is on hand), and they are smart enough to know what is the most valuable and stain-able thing in the room and aim the shit in its direction.

Also, they are batshit crazy. Remember the chimp that went bonkers and almost killed its master's friend? Well, that was an ape with much more strength and higher intelligence than most monkeys, but it's a good example of how primates (and humans do the same thing but that's another story) can just lose it and take out all their frustration - at being cooped up in you crappy apartment being fed Cheetos (you slob) instead of foraging for figs in the treetops - on your face.

I simply cannot see the glamor in having a monkey. Sure, you could teach it cool tricks and probably amuse friends with it, but then that's assuming it likes your friends enough to let them in the house. Monkeys are smart enough to smell douchebag and I bet most of your friends reek of douche, so you have to be careful that your monkey is ok with people before bringing them in to be entertained its tricks, or the shit-flinging will start up all over again. And tricks are all well and good, but you can get a dog to do some pretty cool things and dogs are much more suited to being kept as pets.

I'm just saying, having a monkey only sounds good until you really sit down and start thinking about it. Monkeys are crazy, crafty, sneaky, needy, crazy UN-human animals. They're kind of scary, honestly.

Just wanted to raise some awareness.

A bit in the way of explanation...

So a friend gave me a very interesting essay to read about 'humanoid', 'sociable' robots and their development at MIT. There are a ton of things in here (sorry, it's on paper so I can't link it) that strike me as ridiculously stupid and equally ridiculously terrifying, so if no news stories pop up that strike my fancy for a little while, this may be fodder for a whole lot of posts. Here's one:

The essay describes the development of more human-like robots, their programming to learn like human beings, and the potential for them to experience their own form of very mechanistic emotion, and juxtaposes these developments with the idea that robots are intended to make our lives easier - to do the jobs we find boring or repugnant. And it eventually makes a statement that I found refreshing (and personal):

"To some observers, the real challenge is not how to make human-robot interaction smoother and more natural but how to keep it from overshadowing, and eventually seeming superior to, a different, messier, more complicated, more flawed kind of interaction - the one between one human and another."

The author, Robin Marantz Henig, has hit the nail absolutely on the head. This idea that one day we may prefer and rely so much on robot interaction is absolutely terrifying to me in many ways, but here I'll try to explain the most practical.

In a word, it's the preservation of human interaction, which modern society seems to be trying to forget is probably the most important aspect to our survival as a species and to the planet entirely, that is at stake here. I fear and distrust robots and other high tech gadgets assimilation into the fabric of our lives for the very simple reason that reliance on them, rather than on other people, for meeting our daily needs, invites rampant individualism on a devastating scale. The more we learn to interact with computers and gadgets and robots, even if they are tools for interacting remotely with other people, the more we forget what it's like to actually interact with people. When we become accustomed to having our coffee ready and waiting for us in the morning because our coffee maker was programmed to do it, and when we're used to having conversations via texting or e-mail (giving the person on the other end ample time to carefully consider every word before sending the message), and when our entertainment options are movies so heavily computer-digitized that we hardly see a person's face on screen, etc etc etc ad infinitum, it's easy to forget that there are real people contributing to all these processes. The hands that picked the coffee beans, the mind that created the text message, the team of people that filmed and produced and labored to make that movie... all are easily lost behind the veneer of robotic precision and easy perfection we get on the receiving end.

We come to assume that all these things are easy to make because they are easy for us to get. We forget that there are people who have dedicated their lives to bringing us these things. We forget how to think about and interact with these people. We become, rather than self-supporting individuals, helpless isolationists who have no idea whose labor went into making the goods that we buy, or the real emotions behind someone's e-mail (much less how we'd deal with these emotions if confronted with them face-to-face with no time to plan out typed responses). We become a bunch of isolated freaks, sipping Mountain Dew in front of our sweatshop-produced computer screens at 3:00 am, making up characters to speak for us in chat rooms and avatars to be us in virtual worlds. Reality drops from our consciousness. We forget about other people.

And in so doing we do what we've seen the people at the top of Wall Street do. The heads of giant corporations with their private jets and gold-inlaid toilets who don't know about or understand or give a shit about what the people he stepped on to get there are doing or experiencing. And it's easy for us in America, using all our gadgets, to do the same exact thing, if on a less-grand scale. It's easy, when you're surrounded by gadgets that do everything for you, to forget that people made these gadgets and made the food they're preparing for you. To forgot that other people exist and have feelings and needs and wants and dreams just like you.

It's a slippery slope, and before you know it we've got people killing each other and dying of starvation in one part of the world, where there aren't computers to send e-mails from, or cameras to record the happenings. And we in places where we have computers and cameras and gadgets just... forget... about those people because they have no presence in our tech world. We forget that our actions affect these people. That our actions affect the world itself. We become so self-centered and self-obsessed that we develop neuroses and allergies and diseases the rest of the world has never heard of, just to keep ourselves busy, because our lives are so easy with all the gadgets we have to take care of our everyday tasks. We sit around and watch other people's neuroses on television.

Real, face-to-face, one-on-one interaction is a powerful antidote to allt hese terrors. Even remembering to make face time with a friend or call a relative on her birthday, remembering that other people are there and are real and legitimate entitites can remind us that our iPods are NOT entities, but the product of the hard work of other people, which is a slippery slope in a more positive direction. Reminders of other people. If we allow ourselves to continue making human connections, we arrive at a kind of globalization of consciousness rather than of wealth or materials goods. If, however, we allow ourselves to continue making and interacting with and relying more heavily on machines to run our lives, we are asking for problems and destruction...

That's enough for now.

The scientific mind.

I will freely admit that my brain is not one that likes numbers and facts. It tends toward fanciful, curlique-d, sparkly fantasies because it finds them more appealing. It doesn't like the concept that according to mathematics, everything has one correct answer, or that according to science, everything can be explained in concrete terms. My brain enjoys mystery and imagination and seeing the magic in everyday occurrences. It is not analytical, reasonable, rational, or in any way modern, and that probably accounts for my innate fear of mathematical and scientific principals being applied to the natural world. To my way of thinking, Nature is not beyond math or science - it embodies them and is made of their principles - but it goes beyond their rules and straight lines and angles and numbers into something so vast and divine that it transcends what we can understand logically. And so when I see things like - ahem - robots, or for that matter genetically engineered food or animals, being made by us in a lab and then put out into the world that, despite our best efforts, is still controlled mostly by the large, unpredictable, uncontrollable whims of Nature, I shudder to think of what could happen. We are striving, in these instances, to control Life itself, which is not only beyond our grasp but beyond our ability to understand.

We cannot predict the future, even if we populate it with artificial things that we have engineered to behave predictably. Because those things, once they leave us and enter into the Natural world, are no longer under our control, whether they are pre-programmed to be or not. Nature is bigger than us and it takes over for us where we leave off. We are not smaller versions of some omnipotent personification of God simply because we understand a few theories about space and time and engineering, and even if we were, who can honestly say that that version of God the Creator we're trying to become didn't monumentally screw up when he made us? We've run absolutely amok. Our robots and genetically altered foods and creatures might do the same to us, and likely will if we don't rein ourselves in, and I don't care who laughs at me for thinking it.

Look at it this way. What's the point of robot technology, at its base? To make human life easier (so we can accomplish more 'worthwhile' things like watching TV and eating our Cheeto's without having to crumple up the bag and throw it away ourselves, presumably). Let's say that, a few years in the future, somebody develops a robot sophisticated eough that its primary goal in existing is to make human life easier. Not sure how you'd go about programming such an abstract idea, but let's go with the robot's reason for being as reducing human irritation, frustration, pain, and suffering. Let's say this sophisticated robot spent some time observing human life and realized at some point that human beings are almost always irritated, frustrated, pained, and undergoing suffering - as long as they are alive. Might not the logic that we have come up with and tried to bestow upon our lab experiment be put to use to conclude that life is suffering, and that therefore humans should be killed, so they will no longer suffer?

That's probably been a movie or sci-fi book plot somewhere along the line, so I don't claim it to be some groundbreaking idea, but you see what I mean, right?

Now let's imagine that rather than just having babies in our chaotic, natural, unscientific (or at least the vast majority being unscientific) way and making a few robots (which I think is a bad idea but it's already being done) and messing around with existing life forms to make them "better" (like we did with Africanizing honey bees, remember how that went? KILLER BEES?) and domesticating other life forms that don't want to be domesticated (the killer chimp? anyone?), we decide to start BRINGING EXTINCT LIFE FORMS BACK BECAUSE IT WOULD BE COOL? Does this seem like a good idea? It does, apparently, to a researcher at Harvard, George Church, who has declared that now that we have mapped the entire Neanderthal genome, we could bring a Neanderthal to life for around $30 million. John Tierny, that genius at the New York Times, apparently thinks that's a really nifty idea. "So why not do it? Why not give Harvard’s George Church the money he says could be used to resurrect a Neanderthal from DNA?" he asks.

...has anybody read about the crazed chimp who tore off his master's friend's face? Or read about the horrible things they do to monkeys in lab experiments and felt bad? Or watched JURASSIC PARK, for God's sake??? (I know, I know, that was science fiction, Lynsey, not reality. Well I have a whole buttload of opinions about why science fiction should be taken seriously, but not enough time or room here to list them.) Neanderthals, for all that we know about them - which is in fact quite a lot, given that we've mapped their genome and studied them ad nauseum anthropologically and paleontologically - were very much, VERY much, like modern Homo sapiens. Modern Homo sapiens being ourselves, being the least predictable or controllable animal on earth (if you put aside what advertising campaigns and brainwashing can do), being the ones who thought it'd be a good idea to stockpile nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet. Who can make robots to do their work but can't figure out how to coexist without shooting each other over whose version of the God we want to be is the best.

And these guys... want to... bring back a near-identical species, the capabilities of which we have no inkling and the reason for whose extinction was probably, like most other of Nature's reasons for extinction except for the ones WE'VE inflicted on other species, very good.

If a chimpanzee (chimps are our second closest living relatives, next to bonobos, and are much, much stronger than humans) who'd been living a pampered life in a woman's home, dressing and feeding himself and using a computer, for years, could rip her friend's face off in a moment of frenzy, what do we think a NEANDERTHAL being raised in a lab, most likely, and poked and prodded and examined and tested to no end by scientists who think it's just fascinating, possessed of an intelligence and self-awareness at least close to that of our own, will do?

I know these sentences are long and confusing, but I find the logic here absolutely mystifying myself. This is madness.

I'm going home, locking myself in my room with my Cheeto's, and not coming out till tomorrow. Forget this. My brain might not be great at calculus, but I'll take my common sense and my imagination and my curliques over this nonsense, thankyouverymuch.

I found a niche!

That's right, folks. I've been trying to figure out a way to focus this blog so that I can... well... sell it more effectively. I'm beginning to take my writing a lot more seriously these days, and I've realized that one way to build an audience, and a name, and a style that people might find compelling enough to read if the writing leaps from the internet onto --gasp-- the printed page, is to find a niche for my blog writing. A reason for people to bookmark the blog and come back the next day to see what zany thing I've written about... whatever it is I'm writing about.

So, I've been thinking about the topics I've written on so far, and there actually seems to be a recurring theme. People being stupid. And while one could argue that basically all news stories and human activity center around this very basic function of humankind, I have a more particular kind of stupidity in mind: stupidity on such a scale or bearing such an official banner (in the name of science, government, etc.) that it gets passed off as something else than stupidity entirely. This, my friends, is the kind of moronic thinking and resulting behavior that we must all be on our guards against, for without the foresight to look at the possible results of our dumbness, we all may be doomed.

From now on, that's what I'm here for, folks. Warning us to what we're up to. Calling fouls on hair-brained ideas. Cautioning those who would jump head-first into a burbling cauldron of stupid. Watching out for you guys. Because, after all, I'm a disgrace to the forces of evil in that I DO want you all to be ok in the end. But I can't resist laughing as it all goes down.

I also hope to occasionally provide some links and humor, and kudos to art projects and other such endeavors as I see fit. Cause man cannot live on stupidity alone. Or bread, either.

Anyway, guys, I've niched! Let's get on with it!

Love Potion Number One

An article published today in the New York Times cites another article, recently published in Nature, about the chemical and evolutionary nature of the human experience of love. According to both articles, love as we know it - that rush of euphoria, infatuation, obsession, lust and intense emotional connection that we experience at certain times for certain people - has developed in human beings as a way to strengthen pair bonds between mother and child, and between mated pairs in order to keep them together for the sake of that child.

I've done a lot of reading on this subject and have heard many theories, but none of them counter this very basic idea that love is not so much a mystical force caused by the cataclysmic connection of two souls as by the chemicals that evolution (or God, if that's how you look at it) has placed in us to keep our species going. That may be an unromantic way of looking at things, but as far as I'm concerned, knowing this doesn't reduce the experience of love - nothing really can. Love is one of the defining characteristics of the experience of being human. Even if it is just a bunch of drug-like chemistry pumping through our bodies, it is still the thing that drives people to perform amazing feats, to feel and experience the world and what it means to be alive as perhaps no other species can. And this, no matter what causes it, is transcendant.

But leave it to scientists, of whom many of you may already know I am deeply suspicious, to treat something that borders on magical with the same amount of levity as they would any other natural phenomenon, which is to say, as if it were nothing at all.

While the Larry Young, the author of the Nature article, doesn't cite any specific plans just yet, he mentions that "it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink." John Tierney of the New York Times then goes on to speculate that perhaps what we need more than a real "love potion" would be an "anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself."

Tierney makes some good points about how, if used correctly and at the right times, an love vaccine could prevent people from performing some of the stupider acts that human beings have been wont to perform over the ages - running off with someone else's spouse, falling for a complete loser that all our friends say is bad news, committing criminal acts in the name of love, and so on. Certainly it could be a much bigger boon to humanity than a love potion, which would be used in all the wrong ways, to force people into relationships they didn't want if used on others, and to fool ourselves even more about people who aren't right or even good for us if used on ourselves. But I see problems inherent in both these ideas, and not just small problems. Love, whether it's being enhanced or muffled, isn't something to be taken lightly. Love is a force that, as some have said, can move mountains, and conquer all, and is more or less something we shouldn't fuck with. At least as far as I can tell.

Whether we like it or not, and no matter what name we put on the hands that have sculpted us as we are, evolution or God or what-have-you made us capable of experiencing love for a reason. It has helped us get this far, to the point where no other species on earth can come close to shutting us down. We have beaten the odds and we have gotten as far as this because whatever it is that made us gave us the ability to love. It also gave us the ability to walk upright, and while other species might have been rolling on the ground laughing at us when we started, it hasn't backfired on us yet. Love, just like walking, ultimately came into our genetic code for a reason, and a reason that has served us well so far.

Of course there are times when love hurts us, and when we wish it had never happened, but to cheapen that experience by bottling it just seems... dangerous. What kind of messes could we get ourselves into by taking some anti-love potion and going out on a Saturday night, ending up accidentally with someone who had taken a love potion, or vice versa? Morning-after experiences can be embarassing enough without a whole new cocktail of chemical enhancements to be dealt with, as recreational drugs have proven for centuries already. Add to those already tried-and-true drugs a substance that could literally make one fall head over heels in love and suddenly the possibilities of violence, stalking, jealousy, anger, and regret - among other things - multiplies exponentially. Can you imagine a college dormitory full of 'potioned-up' students, half having even more and more libidinous sex than they currently do while in the throes of the 'anti-love potion's' no-strings-attached high, while the other half fight each other and sigh and moan and wail over their 'soul mates' who they met in line for the unisex bathroom at the club?

Chaos.

Some people, as both articles mention, are born less receptive to the chemicals that cause "love" in the first place, making them less likely to feel the urge to "settle down" or "find someone," while being able to lead less conventional but still very full lives. What's wrong with that? Probably many of our greatest scientists and even artists suffered from lack of desire to love, and ended up making breakthroughs that affected the rest of us for years. But often these "loners" end up convinced by our culture that they "must" find someone and "must" settle down to be normal. Meanwhile, others of us seem hardwired to enter into torrid love affairs with every likely candidate to come along, getting themselves into relationship after relationship with people who hurt, abuse, and devalue them, while friends tell them they need to "cool down" and learn to appreciate being alone.

A love potion and anti-love potion, respectively, could perhaps help these people, but if these 'potions' were to be marketed and developed like any other pharmaceutical, would we then have to label these already-troubled individuals (troubled only because of what society tells them they should be or do, mind you) as "diseased"? Must we now make the desire to be left alone or to be loved as "syndromes" or "disorders"?


I appreciate that biologists and drug manufacturers are trying to help us, but I wish they'd think about it a bit first.

Just a link for now, because I have no words.

But I'm sure I'll have words tomorrow. This is just despicable:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1099447/Saudi-court-tells-girl-aged-EIGHT-divorce-husband-50-years-senior.html

Saudi court tells girl aged EIGHT she cannot divorce husband who is 50 years her senior

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 9:49 AM on 22nd December 2008

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Relatives who did not wish to be named said that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother.

They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of £5,000, as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.
Mr Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the
Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28.

Carried away (I'm so punny!)

Let’s put aside our holiday stress for a moment and think about an oft-overlooked holiday tradition in many major cities, and especially here in New York: carriage horses. The ones in Central Park are a year-round tourist attraction, but at the holidays they’re done up in their drivers’ finest, with garlands and tinsel strewn about on the carriages they pull families of tourists around in. I’ve been hearing rumblings lately about these horses, comments from New Yorkers packed onto the crowded sidewalks with tourists on Central Park South: “Those poor horses. Out in the cold like this!” and: “It’s cruel what they do to those animals!” And so on.

I don’t claim to be some kind of expert on animal psychology, nor do I know much about the living conditions of these animals when they’re not in the park pulling carriages, but I do know a decent bit about horses and what they like. Actually, I love horses. I’m one of those annoying semi-priveleged girls that got to take riding lessons when she was younger and now gets all giggly and big-eyed every time she sees one. I think they’re fantastic.

But that does not mean that I have any illusions, like many others do, about horses. They are not some sort of sparkly fairy creature that will die in captivity. They are not magical unicorns. If you’ve spent any time around them, you know what I mean, and if you don’t, please, please, just listen. This may be tough on anyone who grew up reading Black Beauty or playing with My Little Ponies or even who saw Seabiscuit, but it’s true.

Horses are big, strong, smelly animals. They poop a lot, and they roll around in it, and in dirt, and they stink. They have big brown eyes and long eyelashes, but they are also very willing to bite and kick if they’re in a bad mood. They are beautiful and graceful, but they are also gigantic animals that can weight over a ton. They have been bred for thousands of years to be big and strong enough to carry people and things on their backs, or to pull them behind them. Pulling carriages is literally what most of the horses in Central Park were born to do. In fact, most draft horses can pull up to six times their own body weight easily; it hardly bears mentioning that the carriages in question, even laden with whole tourist families, don’t weigh nearly six times a 1600 lb horse.

PETA (http://www.peta.org/MC/factsheet_display.asp?ID=135), that ever-screeching bastion of wisdom about the animal kingdom, is running a campaign right now against the “abuse” of the carriage horses, maintaining that the animals live miserable lives in terrible conditions and should be taken off the streets. While I appreciate their compassion, I want to point out to each and every one of them that it’s extremely misguided. These horses were born and bred to work, and while I’m sure there are parts of their lives that are less than ideal, that is true of every living thing. While it would be great if all horses could run free in meadows full of daisies, there just aren’t that many meadow-filled daisies these days, and very few people who can afford to support horses who don’t work for a living.

PETA insists that carriage horses will “inevitably” have hoof problems leading to lameness after walking on pavement. While it’s true that they are not meant – biologically – to be treading on paved streets most of their lives, these horses are cared for by professional ferriers who outfit them with specialized shoes to protect their feet as much as possible. PETA also argues that the horses suffer from breathing car exhaust, which I can’t deny, but I beg PETA to remember that so do all of us humans, and we’re doing all right. They maintain that the stalls the horses sleep in are “restricting” and small, but I feel compelled to inquire whether any PETA member has ever been in any other horse barn. Certainly some racehorses live in giant stalls like kings, but the majority of the world’s horses spend their indoor hours in small stalls where they can turn around and take a few steps, but not much more. “And,” PETA members cry, “the horse stalls are dirty! The animals are stepping in their own feces! It’s despicable!” To which I answer, once again: Horses are animals. They poop freely whenever and wherever they want to, including in their bedding. If you are in a horse stall, no matter how big or small or dingy or clean, there is at least a 50% chance that there will be manure in it, and the horse will not be offended in the slightest. It’s a horse.

And therein lies my entire argument. “It’s a horse.” I love horses, as I’ve said before, and of course I want them to have happy and enriching lives, but pretending that they are immaculate, highly intelligent, pseudo-human creatures that somehow need to roam free in fields of grain helps no one. In fact, it just feeds further into the already existing metropolitan ignorance about animals, which in turn leads truly cruel behavior toward our four-legged friends. For instance, I’m sure I’m not the only who has seen Manhattanites pushing dogs around in strollers rather than letting them walk. Taking a dog for a walk does not mean pushing it, people. It means letting the dog walk, because it’s a dog and it needs exercise to be happy and healthy. And even many of the dogs I see walking are wearing fur coats and booties! I’ve read articles on people who spend tens of thousands of dollars getting their cats spray-painted (http://www.whypaintcats.com/). There are rumors that this is a hoax, but the idea has been planted and I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts happening in reality. We’ve all heard stories or known someone who knew someone who had a pet pig that they kept inside in a diaper and fed beer. Or seen specials on people who keep chickens in thousand-dollar houses and take them swimming. The list of atrocious behavior toward animals goes on and on, mostly because people refuse to see animals for what they are: animals, that do not want to be treated like people.

From all I have seen personally, the carriage horses in Central Park want to be treated like horses, and they are treated fairly well as such. They are taken back to the stables to rest when the weather is too extremely hot or cold, are fed several times a day, and are rested for long periods of time. They get adequate exercise, are madly adored by children on the street who feed them treats, and have the company of other horses most of the time. I have never once seen a driver use his whip to urge a horse on, mostly because the horses have walked the route a thousand times and know exactly what they’re doing. Most of them are well-tempered horses who are used to the sights and sounds of the city, although there have been a few incidents of horses spooking at car horns and such and hurting themselves; one did, in fact, die this way a few years ago. And there have also been cases of horses being dehydrated during the hot summer months, but measures have been taken since then to provide them with better access to water.

If we allow PETA to brainwash us into thinking that because what carriage horses do looks less than appealing to us as people it must be wrong, we will only be adding to a culture of ignorance about our fellow creatures. Just because we don’t want to pull carriages and eat oats out of a bucket does not mean that it’s not a perfectly suitable thing for a horse to do. I’m sure there are aspects of their lives that could use improving, and I hope very much that, if nothing else, PETA’s public outcry will push the carriage horse industry to improve all conditions for the horses as much as they can. But shutting them down because we think we know what’s best isn’t going to help anything; it will only put a lot of good horses out of a job and probably out of a good home.

Really cute moment.

Yesterday as I was trying to keep myself awake after a night of fitful sleep, and putting an old friend on a plane in the wee hours, an elderly lady came into the gallery. She was very nice and asked to see a catalogue of Michele Oka Doner's work, which she had never heard of before she saw a picture on my desk.

She took the catalogue aside and looked at it for a while, then up at me and said, "This is the most exciting thing I've seen in a long time!"

She was very earnest about it. Not being annoying or asking dumb questions or demanding information out of me. Just really, really excited and nice. She got herself into kind of a tizzy, then took a press release and set off into the bowels of the gallery to look around. "I'm supposed to be on my way to a hospital," she told me. "But this comes first. Art is far more vital to life."

What an entrancing lady! I hope she comes back. If we had more people come into the gallery who were as excited and in love with ART itself, I might really enjoy my job. As it is most of our visitors are just gawkers who seem not to feel anything when they look at the work, or stuck-up art snobs who only want to know about technique, or rich people dripping with money and privelege (although I've seen fewer of them over the past few months).

It's sad to see people's reactions - or lack thereof - to art sometimes. Granted, the gallery IS a commercial venture, and if you aren't planning to purchase anything here (ie, if you don't have a few hundred grand at least to throw around) then we can't do much for you on a practical level. But the art is here to be bought and sold only on a very superficial level. Art, as Oscar Wilde put it more eloquently, is "quite useless, practically speaking." But art is really HERE to be experienced. To be entered into with the naivety of a child, with the innocence of... well, an innocent. It is here to awe you and take you someplace where you don't think about money and commerce anymore. And of course not all of it will. There this hideous Jesus Rafael Soto piece in the vitrine right in front of me that makes me puzzled and mildly unhappy to look at, for instance. But why come to an art gallery with an agenda? Why badger the receptionist for information she doesn't have, or look dour, or drag your kid around by its hand? I much prefer, and better understand, people who come in wide-eyed and stand for hours and stare.

"The farewell kiss"

So an Iraqi journalist hurled a really vicious insult, and his shoes, at President Bush over the weekend at a press conference. Muntader al-Zaidi, a television journalist for Al-Baghdadia, apparently used his turn to ask a question instead as a chance to hurl his shoes at Bush's head and yell, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" He was immediately tackled by police officers, beaten badly, and taken into custody, where he remains. You can watch the whole throw-down here on YouTube, from several different vantage points.

One of the directors of the gallery, who's sitting at the desk next to me, is watching the video on repeat and laughing hysterically to himself. And I can definitely agree that the physical situation is pretty funny; as one of the comments at the YouTube site declares: "Looks like President Bush was good at dodgeball." (It's true. Dubya is apparently sporting some mad ninja skills! Who knew?) And the pissed look on his face right afterward is serious YouTube gold.

But it's much more than that, too. In the Arab world, as the New York Times points out, the act of touching someone with a shoe is a grave insult because it symbolizes that person being lower than the dirt that touched your shoe. Calling someone a dog is similarly heinous, because Arabs consider dogs particularly dirty and unworthy animals. For his audacity, Al-Zaidi remains in custody and will probably face up to seven years in prison for aggression against a visiting head of state. He has become an overnight hero in Iraq and abroad. He's been awarded for his bravery by a Libyan group. People of all types, from all over Iraq, have taken to the streets in support of his courage, throwing their own shoes at American convoys and burning American flags.

One more reminder that the Iraqis hate us. And they are being joined by an ever-larger inernational community of people who love to watch President Bush being cut down in public as our figurehead. And what's more, most of us here in America love watching him dodge shoes, or trying to talk his way out of interview questions, stumbling over every syllable, or pretending to have some sort of relevence in the government at this point. He's hilarious. Watching him fail is funny. Especially now, when we have something better, someONE better, to look forward to.

But I'm feeling very conflicted about it. It's strange. I've hated this guy since day numero uno. He's in so deep with oil companies he's practically oozing slime, he stole an election (or two), he can't speak to save his life or he would have become a televangelist, and he's been at the head of one of the most blatanly corrupt and shamelessly money-grubbing, war-mongering administrations in history. I fully expect that the crimes of him and his cronies will come to light and go down in history as far dirtier than Nixon and his goons could have ever hoped to be. I get enraged when I think of the way Bush has abused his power and that of our country to protect and industry that doesn't deserve protection. I... well I downright hate the guy. He's a dick.

But there's still a measure of discomfort bubbling in my stomach as I watch him dodge those shoes on YouTube. Even as I see the gleam of pissed-off entitlement creep into his eyes, I think, "Hey, that's MY guy! Leave him alone!" I think what it boils down to is that I'm already embarassed by him on a much larger scale - he's made a mockery of what the idea of America is supposed to stand for. Watching him grovel for public sympathy in the news recently, trying to seem like a nice guy for the cameras, admitting in an interview that he was underprepared for the war, it gives me the squirmies. As if suddenly we're supposed to forget all the bullshit he's put the world through for the past eight years and feel bad for the guy. It sickens me. He's the President of the United States of America. Even if I enjoy a good chuckle over his grammar faux pas doesn't mean I want to see the leader of the free world - MY free world, for better or worse - being not only ridiculed but insulted in such a way that he must literally cower.

I cannot really reconcile myself with the idea that the President, still in power even if only in name, must bear this ridicule. It bodes ill for our country in a much more upsetting way, I think, than the oft-repeated headlines about American flag burnings and anti-American demonstrations across the world. On the one hand, I appreciate more pointed attacks being aimed at Bush himself, as he represents a type of American that is on its way out of power - general anti-American protests label all of us as that same type. But on the other hand, he is still arguably the most powerful man on earth, and he is MY most poewrful man on earth, even though I never would have voted for him.

I don't feel bad for the guy. But I do think he deserves more dignity than he has been getting or even demanding lately, and I hate to think of what this means for the Presidency in general. It bothers me in much the same way that watching the video footage of a sad and grey-bearded Saddam Hussein being poked and prodded by a doctor after his capture bothered me. He might have been a dick, but he was still a human being - a powerful human being who used to command the respect of the world - and worthy of decency. In much the same spirit, then, I say: "Let Bush go out with dignity." If he wants to recant later in life, write a book about how he wasn't ready for war, make public appearances where he invites shoes to be thrown, whatever - let him. But for now, he is still the President. He may be our worst President. But he is President, nonetheless. Let him pass into history on his own terms, and let us judge him on those terms later, but for goodness' sake, let him have what he's left for himself of his own dignity.