Happiness is a warm . . . pun?

“What kind of gun do you want?” the helpful militia man behind the case asked. I had been enlisted on an outing to a shooting range, and I entered the facility with an eager queasiness in my innards. I deferred to my companion and her superior knowledge of firearms, consisting of one previous visit to a shooting range. She responded, “What’s your smallest gun?”

“A .22.” he said. “What’s the next one up?” she asked.

The clerk pulled out an all-black handgun with the name, Walther P99, on it. It looked like every gun I had ever seen in any FBI vs. terrorists TV drama (other common variants are FBI vs. aliens, FBI vs. drug lords, FBI vs. rogue FBI, etc.).

Despite the saturation of gun images in our media culture, I had never shot a gun nor seen one shot live. In my boyhood, I played with BB guns, firing copper beads, then later lead pellets as my tastes became more sophisticated, at paper targets, aluminum cans, glass bottles (not wise, considering the invariable danger of collapsing into sharp fragments), and even to put the fear of God into the hearts of small birds that crowded my mother’s backyard garden. Air rifles worked better than scarecrows, in my experience.

BB guns embodied my childish fantasy of the outdoors and rugged manhood, but they could not convey any of the seriousness of firing a real gun, which is what I expected and feared to find at the shooting range.

Along with the gun and two bags of 9mm luger rounds, we were issued earmuffs. TV shootouts make for a misleading representation of the skull-shattering noise level of real gunfire. Even with the muffs on, each shot from the chaps on either side of me was loud enough to ripple through my chest and come out through my nostrils, leaving me slightly unsteady each time, as though I were standing during minor temblors.

I was surprised at how hard it was to load the bullets into the magazine, which was essentially a cruel-looking, headless, metal Pez dispenser, with bullets for candy. They had to go in one at a time, from the top down, pushing against an unyielding spring. I’m sure my soft poet’s hands would perform the operation quite dexterously with practice, but my first tries were clumsy affairs, trying to push and slide the bullets into the magazine, frustrated by how they resisted, how they seemed determined to pop back out. In other words, almost as hard as getting those candy tablets into a Pez dispenser.

The basic loading procedure involves pulling back the slide, inserting the magazine into the handle, then snapping the slide shut with the press of a button, whereupon the gun is ready to be fired. The Walther P99 is a semi-automatic, meaning that after each shot, it ejects the spent, still-warm casing and loads up the next round from the magazine. As a funny side note, the spent shells are ejected from the right side of the gun, typically spitting out right and down. However, as I was shooting, the occasional shell would pop out directly backward and glance off my shoulder. I even saw a shell bounce out toward the left somehow when my companion was shooting.

After you’ve taped your paper target to a piece of cardboard attached to the conveyer mechanism, you press a button that sends the conveyer hurtling away from you, as far away as you want the target to be. The target shows a roughly life-size outline of a man’s upper body, with various vital organs identified. (I tagged the cerebrum and cerebellum early on, but never was able to pierce the tiny gall bladder.) I was impressed at some of the more creative paper targets people brought from home, including one that featured a swarthy, vaguely Latin-American-looking illustrated guerilla in a beret, gripping a lily white blond girl as a human shield.

In almost all respects, the actual shooting was unlike what I had expected. First of all, if you ever go shooting with something bigger than a BB gun, hold the damn thing tight. Though I’m sure it’s a cooing baby in the hands of some of these muscle-bound gun nuts, in my hands, the Walther kicked like a mule on Viagra. On my first shot, I felt both arms tossed high above my head, wriggling like giant gummy worms. I learned my lesson, but even with acute concentration throughout the rest of my session, the shots still bucked my arms upward each time.

Second of all, one eye or two? My companion insisted it was “lame” to close one eye when aiming, à la TV faux-cool shooters. But one-eye shooting had never failed me on the cans and bottles circuit. I tried it both ways with the Walther, and met with distressingly inconsistent results. One minute, I was sure that two eyes were better than one; the next minute, it seemed like two eyes made my vision blurry.

Which brings me to a related problem. Maybe I’m just getting old, or maybe the noise and smell of gunpowder and shells were getting to me, but I couldn’t keep my vision focused when looking through the gun’s sights. The smell, in fact, acrid with oily metal, burnt smoke, and unshaven men (and women), is probably what made me dizzy, so much so that I eventually cashiered myself into the viewing gallery, rather than finish my bag of ammo.

Third, this is a handgun, not a sniper rifle, so I expected there might be some diminished precision, even compared to my BB gun. But I didn’t expect that once the target was about 20 feet out, it was impossible to hit the body part I was aiming at. Hell, it became hard even to hit any part of the target. In this respect, TV has it right (sometimes). Any time you see a guy on Chuck or Prison Break shooting repeatedly at another guy about ten feet away and missing badly, and you wonder, “Why can’t he hit someone that close?” – well, the reason is: it’s freaking hard. And my targets weren’t even moving.

The thing I most expected this activity to be was the one thing it was not: fun. Even though I was nervous about shooting a gun, I thought the experience would be . . . cool. I was surprised to find that firing a gun conveyed none of the thrill that is popularly believed to accompany the activity. It’s often said that shooting ranges are good for relieving stress (akin to punching a bag), or that shooting offers visceral excitement and feelings of power. None of this was true for me. I found the whole experience more stressful than anything, certainly not a way to relax or have a good time, and at no time did I think to myself, “Man, I feel more powerful than ever!”

That’s not to say that this was a wasted experience. Though I didn’t find it fun, I was glad I tried it, because it helped me appreciate the reality of guns, beyond the fictional representations, which really are largely fantasies. I am reminded of what Thoreau wrote about guns and boyhood:

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

- Thoreau, Walden

I Almost Ate It

“Ate what?” you ask me. The farm, obviously; cows, chickens, tractors, the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. I almost bought the farm, took a dirt nap, bit the dust – however you want to say it in agrarian terms.

I was driving home one recent night, sitting at a major intersection, waiting for green. Green came, and I proceeded to start turning left. I was vaguely aware of the car to my right going straight. I soon became very aware of him. I was in the middle of the intersection, halfway through my lefty, when I heard a screech, then saw my neighbor to the right ram into a medium-sized white van, which had come ripping through the intersection perpendicular to us. My neighbor plowed into the van’s hindquarters, hoisting up the van’s left side briefly, and sending it into a tailspin, till it finally came to a halt facing opposite the direction it came. The chaotic impact happened maybe 20 feet to my right, with the van’s epic spinout streaking just in front of my car, and landing with a squeak about 20 feet in front of me. Refer to the following diagram:



It all happened in half a second. I froze, hitting my brakes immediately, then glanced in my rear view to see if the car behind me might hit me due to the sudden stop. Thankfully, his brakes and awareness worked as well as mine. Suddenly, horns went off like fireworks. I thought I heard honking all around me, and I wondered why people were unleashing the beast. To warn others nearby to watch out? To chastise the red-runner and offer solidarity to the poor schlimazel who was just obeying his green? To summon forth the primeval baboon that lay deep within their human hearts? In hindsight, I think perhaps the struck vehicles, one or both, ended up with their horns stuck in active position, and it was only my frazzled nerves that amplified the sound into a cacophony.

I sat in the middle of the intersection, mouth agape, for about five seconds, before realizing that I probably shouldn’t be hanging out there. One of the van’s wheels had flown loose and skipped off to the side, but the path was mostly clear. I could complete my left turn and hightail it out of there if I wished. And I wished.

I realized that had I driven just a bit faster through that intersection, that van would have been on top of me. If I had been distracted, been careless or upset about some unrelated matter, and tried to take it out on the indifferent road, I might have ended up on the blunt end of a runaway van, and the road would have remained indifferent.

About two minutes and several blocks later, I heard a fire engine wail its way toward the scene of the accident. I actually drove back to the scene about ten minutes later, thinking maybe I should tell the police on site that I had witnessed, nay, nearly been swallowed up in, the mess. But when I got there, I saw that no one seemed to be seriously injured, the police were walking about, talking to, presumably, the drivers/passengers of the wrecked cars. I saw the carcasses of the two vehicles lying in state. And it was pretty clear cut to me. The police didn’t need me to explain what had happened. All you had to do was look at the evidence on site. And I don’t need any more rendezvous with the Man.

I face the government twice a year; once, when I pay taxes, and one more time I offer as an acknowledgement of the inevitability of the Man sticking his nose in my life. Sometimes it’s an ineffectual jury duty notice. Sometimes a reminder to renew my driver’s license. But I won’t go looking for reasons to talk to the Man. Let him come find me if he needs me.

True Believers

Concerning my post about the New Kids on the Block concert, I recently received the following comments from a true believer whose faith has flagged:

“Sounds like it was awesome. . . . Sometimes I dream of attending an MC Hammer concert, but I think you're right that, even though it would probably be fun, it would also be kind of sad just trying to relive the past. And, unlike the New Kids, I don't think Hammer has any comeback in him.”

The last New Kids album before they faded away, Face the Music, with tracks such as "Dirty Dawg," was an attempt to go hard in a musical landscape that had outgrown boy pop and embraced gangsta rap and Seattle grunge. Predictably, the attempt was in vain, as was Hammer's lamentable name truncation (considering his vocal chops, or lack thereof, some thought it appropriate that he dropped the “MC”) and ill-fated final turn toward the hard, The Funky Headhunter. That he released music after that leaves me bewildered.

Gentle reader, don't give up hope! What were the chances of a fourth Indiana Jones movie coming out nigh 20 years after The Last Crusade? For a more germane example, who ever thought the New Kids would return? Their whole appeal was based on their youth, and their old hits, huge as they were, now don’t even get any play on “Friday Flashback” or “Nineties at Noon” segments on the radio. Yet here they are.

Finally, think of this: Michael Jackson is supposedly making a new album, with hot-as-cinders, can-do-no-wrong, craps-out-gold artist Akon on board as producer/collaborator (among other hip-hop and R&B luminaries). If something this obscene is to happen, then I see no reason why MC Hammer can't be revived, in the same way he himself revived (or recycled, or stole, as some would have it) many a 70s funk staple for use as his own songs.

Please Hammer, don't hurt us! We know you have a comeback in you! True believer, I promise you that if the man in the parachute pants returns, you and I will be at that concert.

Adventures in Gaga-land (Englishwomen go home)

As an addendum to my post about the New Kids on the Block concert, I should mention the two opening acts: Lady Gaga and Natasha Bedingfield. To my delighted surprise, Lady Gaga, (not to be confused with the Japanese Goth troupe, Gagaling), the first performer, rocked the house with her blend of pop melodies and dance rhythms. Her kinetic dance moves were just oddball enough to be mesmerizing, and her throaty delivery stamped her anthemic lyrics onto my brain.

The whole visual and aural presentation embodied a New York or London club vibe. Gaga has apparently made her name as a performer, and I could see why. Her bleached blond orgy of hair, bouffant skirt (which pared down to a pair of granny undies halfway through the set), and her jewel-topped glow-scepter (or “disco stick”) completed the image of the dancehall’s upstart dauphine. Working on essentially a quarter-stage with a video backdrop, she presided over four backup dancers who formed a heated phalanx that interpreted the music in high-energy fashion. The music itself was probably the best of the night, New Kids included. It owed much to the live arrangement and Lady Gaga’s over-the-top showmanship, for sure, but the quality of the material stands on its own, a hair higher than what the New Kids dished out.

After the concert, I sought out Gaga’s album, the presumptuously-named, The Fame. Listening to it, I realized that live performance was the conduit between Gaga’s talent and the audience’s emotions. The songs were the same, but the album sounded incredibly muted compared to the show. What it missed was the noise, the pumping, grinding, arm-swinging, crazy-loud music that forced Gaga to sing over it. You don’t hear that effort on the album; the music is as polite as a lace window valance, and I felt that a certain Gaga-ness was lost.

Sandwiched between the high-octane Gaga and the juggernaut of the New Kids was the awkward-as-a-kiwi-bird performance of Natasha Bedingfield. She ambled out on stage and gamely delivered a smattering of limp “hits,” but it left me wondering what went wrong. On paper, this was smart. Bring in some newer fans with her radio-friendly and on-message music (John McCain should pay attention), as well as her innocuous personality (McCain strikes out again!). But the purpose of an opening act is to pump up the audience in preparation for the headliner (read: Gaga), and Bedingfield and her crew played more like a wedding band trying to pump up a toast from the best man. (Speech! Speech!)

I can’t blame her entirely, because the girl does try so hard, singing with three lungs’ worth of oxygen. But her songs are relatively weak and generic, especially those off her latest album. She did sing my favorite of her songs, “These Words,” but it was a lethargic, almost bossa nova perversion of the studio track, such that I felt embarrassed for telling my seatmates that this was Bedingfield’s best song. They’ll never trust my taste in music again.

She was the flip side of Gaga. The iridescent studio production that provides Bedingfield her easy sound could not be reproduced on stage, so she was left with only the mediocre song products that her major label has foisted on her. “Where’s Donnie?” I cried out to the void, hoping that the clown prince of the New Kids would appear and kick someone’s ass, if only to keep my eyelids from drooping.

The Block is Back

“Fifteen years ago . . . they walked away. Tonight . . . the Block . . . is back. Are . . . you . . . ready?”

The text flashes on three giant screens behind the stage, interwoven with black and white clips from a heyday so remote, yet so familiar, that it causes simultaneous feelings of shock and yearning. Lush strings and a score worthy of Hollywood blockbusters tap directly into the audience’s tear ducts. For anyone standing in that audience who also happened to be there when The Block first hit two decades ago, the questions mounted. Could the bodies of men pushing 40 still rock the dance moves of teenage yore? Could they possibly be “for real,” or were they just the ugly girl seen behind the beer goggles of nostalgia? Could Joey still hit those high notes in “Please Don’t Go, Girl,” like a 14-year-old boy?

One question trumped them all, the one we had already been asked: Are you ready? My answer: no. And yes. Oh yes. The New Kids on the Block are back.

They played Cox Arena on November 25, 2008, at the tail end of their North American reunion tour. I’ve been to many concerts in my life, from the enormous to the puny. I’ve seen U2 play to a full house at the San Diego Sports Arena, and I’ve seen Danish star (and American nobody) Tina Dico play in front of about a dozen people at the Casbah. Music is one of my “things,” and so by extension are concerts. But after what I saw the New Kids pull off, I will have to reclassify my previous concert experiences as “music performances.”

My musical tastes tend toward the obscure, or at least something smaller than the top 40 wonder-divas of the day, or legacy rockers with legions of gray-haired followers. As such, I don’t attend very many stadium spectacles, or “concerts in the park,” too big for any building to contain. But I’ve seen Shakira, Sarah McLachlan, Juanes, and the aforementioned U2, probably the biggest band in the world. All of these are artists who follow the “go big or go home” philosophy of performance. All of their shows looked small compared to the New Kids concert.

This concert had everything:

• Fog machines, streamer confetti, and showers of sparklers accented various portions of the show.
• Danny Wood performed several breakdance pieces, including that feat of strength where you go parallel to the ground and hold your body up just with your hands. He went into spins and “runs” on his hands.

• Cursing, though sparse. Joey, last seen as the kiddiest of the kids, had fun with it, unleashing a “Holy sh--!” then saying, “I don’t know if we swore back in the day.”
• Mid-way through the show, they relocated to a circular, rotating off-stage stage in the middle of the floor. Here they performed old hits such as “Tonight” and new hits such as “Dirty Dancing,” while dancing around a baby grand piano, atop of which a go-go dancer cavorted.
• A solo Jordan Knight performed “Baby, I Believe in You” on a high platform, while an industrial fan blew upward at his open chest, his almost-off shirt flapping behind him like an impudent sail.

• At the first “intermission” or costume change, the video screens played an oddly out-of-place montage of fallen musicians and family members. It was reminiscent of Oscars-night tributes, accompanied by the same raucous cheers for the images of, say, Kurt Cobain and James Brown, and crickets chirping for, well, how would I know who those people were? My best guess for why they showed this: in the 15 years of silence since we last heard from the New Kids, these are the people they lost personally, as well as those who are lost to our musical culture. And yet the New Kids survived.
• Speaking of costume changes, the New Kids brought the chic, donning everything from suits to t-shirts and jeans to lily-white psych-ward get-ups to Celtics jerseys, a shout-out to their Beantown roots.
• Jordan and Joey McIntire both had the stage to themselves for several of their own non-New Kids songs. Perhaps they were rehearsing for their solo careers? They are clearly the singing stars of the band, and Joey in particular looks like a matinee idol and would surely win most American Idol seasons handily, but I think their best music has been made as New Kids.
• The backing band usually gets introduced at the end of the show; the New Kids introduced them with raps riffing on the players’ names.
• A brief cover of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” was inserted seamlessly into “Hangin’ Tough.” The New Kids closed the show with a seemingly impromptu but almost certainly meticulously rehearsed cover of Little Richard’s “You Make Me Wanna Shout.”
• Crotch-grabbing and self-deprecating commentary. Though an earlier team grab during a dance routine threatened to bring the house down with the weight of fainting women, the most precious crotch grab of the night happened at the end of “Click Click Click,” where the band has a ritual pose-off, in keeping with the photographic theme of the song. This one saw Jonathan Knight giving a monumental heave to the family jewels, the image lustily displayed on the big screen above the stage. The other New Kids bowed deferentially to the genre-destroying clutch.

• They brought the noise, in the form of their adoring fans. I’ve never been to any concert or any event of any kind that was so loud with screaming devotees.
• They played for almost two hours and a half hours, in an age when even big shows rarely last more than an hour and a half.
  

I was actually not a New Kids fan in my youth, but I have been informed that many of the details I noticed at this concert are iconic throwbacks to their glorious concerts and videos of the past, including Joey’s smiley face black jacket, Jordan’s shirtlessness, and of course, their legendary dance moves. The crowd went wild at the first strains of “The Right Stuff”; the Kids could have left it at that, and everyone would have been happy. But for them to have relearned and then performed the classic dance routine that older fans surely remembered, well, it brought a deep smile of satisfaction to my face. What I appreciated was the exceptional fan-service that wasn’t necessarily expected, but is the sort of thing that separates a merely good performer from a band that truly respects its fans and is doing its best to connect with them.

It seemed to me that the New Kids didn’t feel merely respect, but extraordinary gratitude for their fan base. Here’s a band that went from being princes of the world to being a musical joke, all within a few years. They could have reunited and been greeted with the sound of one hand clapping. That their new CD is selling well and they’ve been welcomed by a new generation of teenagers is a gift. I admired how determined they seemed to not have anyone leave the building feeling disappointed. It was as if they dreaded most the thought that someone would go home saying, “Well, they used to be good, but I don’t know why they came back.”

Why did they come back? Answers: Yes, they can still dance like fiends. Yes, they are “for real.” And no, Joey doesn’t sing like a little boy anymore. But that was the beauty of this concert. They’re not the same as they were, and I think no matter what expectations the crowd was carrying into the show, they would have been a little disappointed if the band hadn’t changed. I think what the old fans wanted to see in their New Kids is that they be new again. Their new album is very much a product crafted to appeal to current R&B and hip-hoppy pop tastes, and as such, the songs sound a lot like many other genre hits on the radio. Their old songs, though refreshing to hear now (and live), are still old, and being different from what’s produced now doesn’t make them new. What was new about the New Kids to me was their attitude toward the music and toward their audience.

They seemed to know that their old songs, though catchy and even enduring, are not the pinnacle of songwriting, so they sang them as fun songs, not as preciously overwrought opuses. And as cheesy as a lot of the antics were (breakdancing?), and as dated as the dancing was, the whole performance radiated cool. I think it was because they embraced the cheesiness as part of their history, instead of denying it. If they had seemed ashamed of their past, then the whole audience would have to be ashamed of themselves for coming to the show. That kind of cowardice would not have gone over well. Instead, the New Kids showed that they were happy to be back and even happier to know that they were missed. Their lack of pretension created something that was genuinely new in the musical world, and it was music to my ears.

But there’s something even simpler than this, and it has to do with those 15 years gone by. Seeing little Joey and the rest of them bringing the goods in their mid- to late-30s is reassurance that even though we’re all a little older, we can still raise the roof that looms ever nearer to our heads.

(The lone missed opportunity was the band’s failure to perform their new song, “Big Girl Now,” recorded on their CD with Lady Gaga, who happened to be the first opening act, and was thus in the house. This was especially disappointing because they had actually performed the song together at least once before, at the Sacramento concert. I can only surmise that they decided it wasn’t a great showpiece, or Lady Gaga was somehow unavailable. But it would have done much to bridge the gap between old fans and new. Instead, we were treated to the New Kids singing “Grown Man” alongside a video of Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls. It was rather depressing stuff.)

My companions at the show, neither one of them out of swaddling clothes when the New Kids were darlings of the universe, are ardent fans of their new album, The Block, but were only vaguely aware that there existed a prior incarnation of the band, one that featured jazzy hats, skinny ponytails, and shameless falsetto. I asked them how they liked the show, and they said it was good, but they prefer “the real The Block.”

I would say they’ve missed the point, but that would imply that they ever could have gotten the point. Not having been there in 1990, however, there’s really no way they could have “gotten” it. It would be like asking me to appreciate the JFK assassination. Yes, I understand the significance, but I can never “get” it the way someone who was alive then “gets” it. To them, the popularity of the New Kids is a tedious history lesson.

It occurred to me that here was a generation of young people who thought that the New Kids on the Block were that hot band that had collaborated with Ne-yo and the Pussycat Dolls. God willing, their second lease on life will be as fruitful as the first, so that their current work can legitimately be called “the real The Block.” Until then, the New Kids will always be a Hypercolor dream of synth and drum machines and not one, but two, hit songs with an “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” hook.

(Note: I neglected to bring a camera to the show because I didn’t realize it was going to be awesome. As a result, I’ve scavenged Youtube to find the clips in this article, which occasionally necessitated using footage from other shows if it wasn’t available for the San Diego concert.)

Yes No Prop 8

A curious incident on the homestead. Amid some television news coverage of yet another street rally against the passage of Proposition 8 (a “hot button” issue, which forbade gay marriage in California), my father shared his philosophy on the topic. “I voted yes on 8. These people are sick. They were born this way. Why should they be punished for that? Why should we prevent them from getting married?”

My eyebrow rose, almost involuntarily. “A Yes vote means that gays can’t get married,” I said. “Oh!” my father rushed to correct himself, “I mean I voted no.” Of course he did. Surely he just misspoke, and didn’t actually misapply a Yes vote for a No on the ballot, right? And then I wondered how many voters on Election Day, less careful than my father, actually voted Yes when they meant No, or vice versa.

I am reminded of the hilarious Simpsons episode (Season 15, Episode 8) where Homer buffoonishly tries to assist Marge’s campaign for a particular proposition, including printing up bumper stickers that say “Yes No 242.”

This whole ordeal of an election cycle (disregarding for a moment the beauty pageant cum satyr play that was the presidential election), all the way up to the street rallies and the tragicomic words flowing from my father’s mouth, was a living picture of our glorious democracy, up to its gills in its solemn duty of obfuscating the issues and obscuring facts. Hence, the laughable (or reviled, or endearing, depending on your stance) “King and King” commercial in support of Prop 8.

It makes me wonder where all these rally-rabbits were before the election. Even in my neighborhood of Hillcrest, epicenter of gay life in San Diego, I saw only the occasional “No on 8” sign dangling from a chain-link fence, whereas pretty much any other neighborhood in town was rife with Charlie Churches and pregnant housewives pushing strollers at major intersections and spreading the gospel. How many horn-honkers did I have to endure every time I got stuck behind a traffic light?

My father’s comments were followed by my mother’s virulent proclamations that gay marriage was wrong and that she had voted against the proposition. Or was it for the proposition? Having mailed their ballots in beforehand, my mother, who had apparently delegated the task of actually filling out the ballots to my father, questioned him on whether he had marked her down for a Yes or No. Really, do we even know the difference?

My final word? I believe it was best expressed on a car window I saw whizzing by the other day: “Equality in marriage. Everyone deserves the right to be miserable.”

Odd Fellow Societies

There is a perception, taken for granted, among mainstream "voting" America that people who don't vote are people who don't care. About the country's present and future, about liberty and high ideals, about their neighbors, about society in general - they just don't care one whit about matters of consequence. I can grant that this is likely true of most non-voters (and I would doubly assert that this is true of most voters as well). But for myself, I can say that it's because I do care that I don't vote.

For "voters" to think that I am the strange one, that I'm doing something unconscionable, or at the very least thoughtless, says to me only that they are relying on their prejudices. To me, they are the ones who are guilty of not thinking.

Why don't I vote? It's not because each individual vote "doesn't matter," as is commonly bandied about even by unsentimental voters. That's too easy an answer, and it embodies the very lack of care that non-voters are accused of. My vote may not matter, but neither does the "work" I do at my job, and yet I don't cease to go to the office.

It's not because I'm against the government, whether this government or any other that would leave me reasonably unmolested. Though I am against having any direct contact with a government, I am not against its right to exist. I believe in the social contract, that having accepted a place in this society, I ought to recognize some of the rules of the place.

I don't vote because I don't believe that it makes me a better human being or a better citizen. And in fact, it would make me worse in both respects, because it would mean that I'm bowing down to forces that I don't believe in.

I reflect on the words of Thoreau, once jailed for his refusal to support an American government that permitted slavery, and now a universally sanctified American hero:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
- Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government (aka Civil Disobedience)

(It baffles me that a thinker as anarchic and individualistic as Thoreau has come to be embraced by a culture that has withered to such a level of conformity and fearfulness as ours. But perhaps the times were just as bad in Thoreau's day, and such a society is apt to misunderstand what Thoreau meant and to adopt him as one of their own.)

What the quote doesn't say explicitly is that you don't vote for anyone or even any party. All your vote says is that no matter what the outcome of the election, you will accept it. Your vote is your buy-in voucher, saying that you support the system, no matter which figurehead stands atop it. You vote only for perpetuating the system, whether it be good or bad. I hear of Americans moving to Canada if their presidential choice is not elected - yes, I hear of it as a joke, not as a matter of serious deliberation.

In a representative democracy, what is a man to do when he alone represents himself? How can I in good conscience vote for someone who doesn't represent me? In the spirit of American self-reliance, I choose to stand outside of this fray, this mess hall of gluttons eating with their hands, who do not see that you cannot fix the system by working within the system. Maybe if enough people stood alongside me for the right reasons, and not because they don't care, then the country would see that there is another way to carry on without tipping over. They will see that we are not the strange ones. It is the mainstreamers, who work so hard to get us to buy in to their world-view, who categorically trumpet the virtues of democracy and capitalism, as if all human progress ended there, it is they who are the strange ones.

Why don't I vote? If I did, if like a good boy, I registered and went to the polls, would the guys in cheap baseball caps wielding clipboards leave me alone? Yes, they would. Because that's how little they care.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run “amok” against society; but I preferred that society should run “amok” against me, it being the desperate party.
- Thoreau, Walden

Eddie-isms

Over Christmas week 2007, my family went on tour in Japan. Among the highlights of that trip was our tour guide, Eddie, whose Engrish was the equal of the estimable standard set by the country he was surveying for us. (His Chinese subsisted on rarefied, literary air, such that I regret that I cannot reproduce those pearls.) Presented here are some nuggets from his linguistic treasury.

On the subway
Going on the subway to work in Tokyo is like going to the Hell. H-E-L-L.

On the packed subway
Sometimes, women lose their shape in the subway. A beautiful girl is 35-23-35. After the ride, she will be 23-23-23.

On Japanese finances
The average salary in Japan is $48,000 a year. This is not a big money in Japan.

On the men who act in the Kabuki theater
The actors are so gentle. Even a woman cannot be that gentle.

On Kyoto girls
There are many beautiful girls in Kyoto.

On Japanese tofu
This is called Japanese tau-fu.

On Japanese competitiveness
The Japanese are very challenging.

On Japanese honor
Chinese people will talk about someone’s mother, sister, grandmother. You can insult a Japanese person’s mother, sister, grandmother, and it’s nothing. But if you call a Japanese person a bakayero, he will kill you!

On the availability of children’s toys
We have the Pooh.

On the availability of name brands
We have many branded goods.

On bathroom breaks (and the similarities between a man and a bus)
We will stop here so you can release gas. The bus will release gas, and you will release gas.

On Mount Fuji
Getting the picture of Mount Fuji is worth one million dollars U.S. Without the picture, your trip is worth nothing.

On the hot spring baths
You are only allowed to wear nothing. If you are shy, use a facecloth. Don’t cover down here; cover your eyes, and no one can see you.

On the deer at Nara’s deer park
This will save your life. The deer’s grand-grand children will come around. Show them your hands like this, so they see you have no cookie. If the deer start to chase you, you must run away fast.

On compulsory tipping
Now Eddie give you a gift, now you give Eddie a gift.


Bonus: Eddie’s pronunciation of “Buddhism” as Buddhi-ism, or booty-ism

The Will to Power

At the University of Chicago, I discovered a low-tech way of keeping drinks cold without a refrigerator. I’m sure I’m not the originator of this method, nor its most extensive practitioner, but I was pretty proud of the fact that I came up with it myself, rather than having it sprinkled down to me along with other secrets of college life.

The trick was to place your can of Coke in the window sill on a frigid winter day. It probably helped to close the window to block out the toasty indoor air, but this went without saying, since on days that frosty, one was unlikely to keep the window open for long. Sitting outside like that, sodas (or “pop,” in Midwest lingo, but that’s a topic for another blog tirade) would get as chilled as in the best refrigerator.

Obviously, this technique was strictly seasonal (and geographic), but Chicago has a long cold season, so for about four or five months a year, I went “green,” using nature’s refrigeration. I considered it the crown of luxurious creativity to sit at my desk with my studies, right beside the window, and be able to reach out for a “cold one” any time I liked, without having to leave my chair.

In my own cavalier way, I had whipped man and his machines, at the same time subjecting nature to my appetite. Unbeknownst to myself, I had become a voracious omniphage, gobbling up nature and man alike, indiscriminate, so long as I was exerting my power over the once-powerful. Nietzsche described all human endeavor as an expression of “the will to power.” Inevitable, perhaps:

Where I found the living, there I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I found the will to be master.
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, On Self-Overcoming

One day, soaring high in my hubris, relishing my triumph over nature and technology, I reached too high, and saw myself brought low. If the window sill works for Moxie and Faygo, I thought, why not keep my lunch out there, too? It was customary in those days of larcenous meal plans to take home a sandwich or three from the dining hall, somewhat on the sly. The contents being generally perishable, it didn’t behoove you to take too much food “to go,” not more than you could eat within a couple of hours, unless – ah! – unless you had a refrigerator.

With my new mastery over the force, er, over nature, who could stop me now? After lunch, I plunked a neatly bagged sandwich onto my window sill and headed off to class. Keep her cold, baby, keep her cold! With the knowledge that I had a nice, non-spoiled snack to come home to, the slate walking paths seemed pillow-soft, and the Chicago wind lost a bit of its bite.

On the walk back that evening, I could almost taste the sandwich as I glided up the stair-rail, like a daredevil video on rewind. I lifted the window, snatched the bag, and prepared to feast.

Horror. Dismay. Revulsion. Think of a moment in your own life that conjured up these words, and then multiply the anguish by a million. It was nearly Oedipal. Such was the feeling that liquefied my bowels upon seeing a gaping hole in the bag, its rim encrusted with sandwich crumbs and some grainy, dark residue, doubtless the foul saliva of a rabid squirrel.

I looked at the window, and discerned the unfathomable violence of this theft and desecration. The window sill was covered by a typical mesh metal screen. Through sheer contempt, this squirrel had chewed a hole through the screen just big enough to fit its savage (and presumably pus-covered) head. Whether he ingested the bits of metal screen (and the paper and plastic that wrapped my sandwich, for that matter) is a matter of conjecture. His malicious intent is not.

To tear open the screen and rip into my sandwich like that was unscrupulous. But to leave behind the defiled ruins of my sandwich – it was like killing someone, then mutilating the body. I had lost my snack, and I almost “lost my lunch” at the nauseating sight.

I had no idea that squirrels had a taste for oven-roasted turkey on a Kaiser roll. That was a valuable lesson learned.

A second lesson: Having surmounted nature, I thought myself invincible, but soon learned that nature, the vengeful mother-beast, ever mounts you right back.

Samus was right

Like the wheel, some things, once invented, don’t require any fundamental changes. A has always been jump, and B has always been attack. Just like A has always been "confirm," and B has always been "negate" or "go back" in menu screens. These are Nintendo staples, going back to the 80s. (Arcade games of the time were fond of designating their buttons with names of moves, rather than letters or numbers.)

It was only during the Sony Playstation era that it became fashionable to switch the venerable identities of A and B (or what in Sony parlance is circle and cross, or some such folderol). This travesty has gained much traction throughout the gaming world, but not a whiff can be found in the world of Nintendo, Jebus be praised.

I am gratified that Nintendo’s current DS ports of old Super NES games faithfully retain the classic control schemes. One might argue that it would be nice for them to have included an option to customize controls. Granted. It would also be nice for them to have included instant replay, an unlockable library of cutscenes, and language options for French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Tagalog. Hey, why not free t-shirts, too?

One might say that the times being what they are, Nintendo might have accommodated younger players, or older players who have fully conformed to the Sony paradigm. But I know at least one younger player who grew up during Sony’s period of hegemony, and she has no trouble rocking it Nintendo-style. And I personally go between the two with nary a hitch (though my sense of logic winces at the falsity of pressing B to confirm).

Though my preference is clear, I’m not contrasting “what’s right” and “what’s wrong,” but only “what is” and “what once was and can still be.” Though I have no problems with the Sony style, I’ve never heard a practical argument about why this change was necessary. It seems like its true raison d’être was to differentiate Sony from its predecessors.

I may be biased. After all, even as I play Playstation 1/2/3 games, I still refer to the buttons as “A, B, X, and Y,” and am bemused and befuddled any time someone growls at me, “Press Triangle!” NEStalgia is a beautiful thing.

The Cry of the Unrepentant

As with so many tales of Grand Theft Auto III, this one began innocently enough, with a beat cop on my tail. On foot, my vehicle rendered scrap metal, in need of relief, and shooting it out never a sane option, I noticed that I was just outside of the Ammo Nation store, and I wondered if I might be able to take refuge there. To my surprise, not only could I enter the store, but the boy in blue couldn’t follow me in. “I could probably just wait him out,” I thought, surmising that the game wasn’t designed to keep this cop there indefinitely. Minutes passed, dangerous minutes, where the cop stayed put, but my mind wandered to an undiscovered country of mayhem. “If he won’t leave peacefully, maybe I can take him out.” A statement destined to cement my proverbial “life of crime.”

He wasn’t necessarily a sitting duck, but something of a nebulous target beyond the store’s open door. The rather awkward geometry of the game didn’t offer a shooting gallery, but where straight shots didn’t work, I figured an old-fashioned hand grenade would (close does count).

The game offers a rather satisfying and grisly chime every time you mow down a pedestrian or cop, signifying the even grislier acquisition of “cash for crime,” let’s call it. After my grenade launch, hearing the chime and seeing a few hundred simoleons added to my ticker, a little thrill ran through my body, what Nabokov might have called the “tingle” that one gets when experiencing great art. How deliciously perverse, I thought, to know that this helpless badge-wearer was now pushing up daisies, all because the game design wouldn’t let him into Ammo Nation, nor would it let him give up his pursuit of me.

What followed is a unique episode that has assumed the status of mythology, even within the hallowed annals of my illustrious gaming life. I have always maintained that Grand Theft Auto III is a game rife with design flaws, but sometimes these flaws can become a sort of genius in the hands of creative players (and this is perhaps the greatest virtue of its so-called “open-ended” gameplay – its shortcomings are part and parcel of providing a malleable and enjoyable experience).

One dead cop was replaced by two live ones. Kill those, and they are replaced by four. Running low on ammo? Did you forget that you’re holed up at Ammo Nation, where the invisible shopkeep is happy to keep dishing up more grenades? Running low on cash? That won’t happen as long as perished lawmen keep your coffers lined with gold. Occasionally, and increasingly, as the number of live shots coming my way kept rising, those cops would nail me. Yes, their bullets were real, even if their bodies were mostly phantasms. This, too, was irrelevant – Ammo Nation sells health refills in the form of “shields.”

Oh yes, the cops never stop coming, and their numbers and severity only increase. And yet, they could never kill me. I could live forever, but I could never leave that room.

Imagine Sisyphus pushing that boulder up that hill, but instead of it rolling back down, he gets it to the summit, only to see that there’s another hill. Sisyphean the task remains, but obvious futility is replaced by the suggestion of accomplishment, though illusory and fleeting. The reward is the punishment.

Finally, after several day-night cycles had passed, during which the besieging force grew from one lowly squad car to a battalion complete with tanks, heavy artillery, and even Secret Service agents; finally, when I wearied of lobbing grenades out the front door of Ammo Nation, laying waste to generations of Army privates and police lieutenants "two days from retirement”; finally, after having stretched this paragon of “open-ended” gameplay to its absolute terminus (arguably both the zenith and the nadir of my experience with the game); finally, after being so numbed by the endless cycle of death that I no longer valued my own life, I hurled some path-clearing grenades out the door and then lurched out into daylight, fully armed and hell-bent on a valiant last charge against an unbeatable foe, guns blazing and lungs belting out the cry of the unrepentant, as in many a Hollywood war movie. . . .

Half a second later, before I could discharge a single bullet, I was reduced to a bloody stain on the asphalt, and the screen spun my corpse round and round into oblivion.

What’s in a name?

Mere minutes after choosing the name of this blog, Czardoz Contra World, I was struck by an amusing thought. Would readers be drawn to this blog mistakenly thinking that it was devoted to the video game Contra? The name is of course a riff on Nietzsche contra Wagner, the great philosopher’s essay cum diatribe against the great composer. After a coming of age, or perhaps better termed a spiritual earthquake, Nietzsche turns on his former friend and hero, unleashing his often vitriolic prose (and even a bit of impish verse) against Richard Wagner, now become the laughable prophet of mediocrity.

Despite the game’s various merits and numerous fans, this blog will feature no gratuitous discussion of Contra, or its sequels or derivatives. Forgive me, errant Googlers, for here your bullet-riddled vision-quest/nightmare shall not be found.

Perhaps a survey will be in order for choosing a more appropriate name for this blog. Or perhaps this name will stick, despite any perceived ambiguity. After all, does anyone think of rainforests when browsing Amazon.com?

As far as the idea of being “against the world,” this is meant partly in jest. One cannot be wholly against the world if one is still living within the world. But conflict is the seed of not only great writing, but also writing that gets the dogs barking, so why not stick a little skirmish in the name as well? As Brian Cazeneuve put it, “War is on Page One of your local paper. Détente is on page 47.”