Dairy of a Madman

(Feel free to skip this review, if you like, and jump straight to the book. The title of this post refers to the latter; this once, I won’t be hurt.)

There’s a magic in Vonnegut’s writing that I’ve never found in any other. I’ve found many an author that can take me in, that can transport me and move me, but no other can touch my (cliche? why not?) soul like the late KVJ. Walking away from a reading of some of his books leaves that same ethereal, other-worldly, drugged feeling that I go coming out of my first theatrical viewings of The Matrix and Memento. Sure, I’ve got plenty of movies that I’ve loved in my life, but so very few that profoundly affected me on a core for which I have no words.

There were a few of his books — like Cat’s Cradle, maybe, or a few of the shorts in Welcome to the Monkey House — that, as wonderful as they were, didn’t hit me any harder than my other favorites (Palahniuk, McCammon, King), but at the top of his game, Vonnegut is king, and the posthumous Armageddon in Retrospect is a fitting memorial landmark for his kingdom.

Before reading the short fiction and essays collected in Armageddon, it’s best to have read Slaughterhouse Five, his absurdist novel memoir of his experience as a POW who survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany in 1945. The two work wonderfully together to show, both through the words and the tone, the effects and the horror of war. None of this comes across as preachy, though it definitely has a distinct point of view.

After reading Armageddon, it seems a lot clearer to me why so many politicians who have never seen combat (or served in anything more dangerous than a Guard reserve unit) have no reservations about sending people into war for any reason other than absolute necessity. I think that if more people in positions of power had seen and experienced anything even remotely close to what obviously shaped so much of Vonnegut’s life, then a number of conflicts (such as we are currently engaged in in Iraq, for instance) would never have happened, and uncountable decisions in the course of wars might be a little better considered.

Perhaps those sitting in higher places should be forced to read and memorize both Armageddon in Retrospect and Slaughterhouse Five, as well as the tragically overlooked and underrated Timequake (in which the entire world is forced to relive ten years in realtime, both successes and tragedies). Maybe then they’d be more careful (and not to imply that all wars are based on cavalier decisions, though I’m certain that there are a few of those) about considering the costs of their goals, and whether the two balance in the end.

But probably not, because there are other things at stake besides regret and understanding atrocity, like oil rights and the wants of their cronies.

So it goes.

Rest well, Kurt, and know that you made a mark on at least one of us.

Cynthia’s a bellydancer (and infinitely better — inherently so, from what I’ve seen — than she’ll ever let on). This makes all the guys at the bar delirious with envy, of course, because everyone knows that bellydancers are incredibly hot (true, at least for my wife, one of her friends, and two of the women in the instructional DVDs she owns), flexible (also true), and open to trying new and crazy things (not anymore true than for any other group, sadly).

What the guys don’t realize is that you have to listen to your bellydancing wife practice her zills. Continue reading “There’s One in Every Crowd. Sometimes, a Whole Bunch.”

I Can See Your House From Here
v3.01

Friends, Romans, countrymen – lend me your ears. I seem to have damaged mine.

In spite of all the naysayers in the artistic community, Birmingham is no different than the rest of the nation. Which is to say, it’s a completely different microcosm: the religious element is stronger, the politics trend toward the conservative, the cost of living is lower, the humidity off the charts. But all in all, Birmingham is the same as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles: we follow some trends, we ignore others, and once in a blue moon, we inspire a few here and there.

Sure, there are no major music labels based here, no well-funded Hollywood-style studios, no empires of artistic production. Those things are secondary to the creative world, though; without the works of the artist, labels and studios and publishers have no raison d’etre. The Atlantics and Sonys and Putnams of the world are businessmen, channeling finance from art. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; those of us who create could certainly use a little more finance in our lives. But to point to the lack of artistic business world in Birmingham as a major weakness belittles the true source of creativity.

Argue the individual importances all you like, but the Magic City has been home to many a nationally recognized entertainment figure. We’ve got musicians (Verbena, Cleve Eaton, Emmylou Harris), writers (Robert McCammon, Dennis Covington, Margaret Walker), actors (Courtney Cox and Kate Jackson). We’re to blame for the area code shirts that everyone wore for a year. Without us, there might be no Alan Hunter, and where would that leave MTV?

Two words: Alan Curry.

If there is a separation between Birmingham and other cities, it might be the support system for creativity. But there, again, I wager that we balance out, looking from a distance like any other city or town in the nation. The audiences are larger at Star Wars than Crash, J. K. Rowland outsells Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and television is viewed more than all the theater and gallery exhibits together. While the products aimed at the masses will always draw more people than the art that challenges and stimulates, there is still an audience for even the most obscure. Theater productions, art house films, and the collected works of William Burroughs have their fans here, and will continue to do so. Complaining about the small size of your audience as a creator is to ignore the desire for easy digestion by the majority of the world (or your own lack of talent – but easier to blame it on the city, right?).

No, we’re not as influential on the national trends as Los Angeles or New York, but then, we’re not as large. For our size, though, I suspect that we have more than our fair share of impact, just as we are shaped by the endeavors of artists from San Francisco, Miami, Boston, or Austin. And just like those landscapes, ours is filled with hidden treasures, pockets of brilliant riches waiting to be discovered, if only by the few who can divine their beauty.

The American Heritage dictionary defines creative as such: “Characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative.” This means two things: we can take Britney Spears off my list of topics to cover, and I can add a lot of areas that people tend to ignore when thinking of creativity. Of course the area encapsulates music, filmmaking, theater, writing, dance, and the rest of the cultural arts, but it’s wrong to forget things like architecture, web design, and advertising – ventures that step outside of entertainment, but benefit from a unique and imaginative approach.

And so, Birmingham, I challenge you: look around and find the creativity that surrounds you every day. Recognize the originality that exists in and is inspired by the city. Note how it is influenced by the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world is influenced by it.

Written 15 May 2005, and promptly forgotten. Oops. I think this was my pitch to the Birmingham Weekly editor for a resurrection of I Can See Your House From Here, a weekly column I wrote for RevolutionSF.com in 2002.

I should really get off my ass and write more.

I think more telling than approval ratings, Congressional hearings that seem to have neither end nor real purpose, ethically dubious wars, cronyism that can result in horrible mishandling of natural disasters, or even the convenient rewritings of history where personal lives are concerned, the current administration’s blatant disdain for the Constitution and the rights it gives American citizens is the greatest sign that not one of these people is of the character to lead this country. We have an Attorney General who perjures himself every time his mouth falls open, a Vice President who would presumably as soon take you on a hunting trip as have you arrested if you dare to disagree with him or his policies, freedoms being stripped away and laws being broken on a daily basis in the name of — oh, right. In the name of those very freedoms and laws, of protecting and preserving them for future generations.

Continue reading “This Changing Country”

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The mind positively boggles. I watch this, and I feel like either I’m living in 1993 and didn’t realize it, or that there’s a Los Angeles, Iowa (population: 11) responsible for this.

As we sit at our desks, programming our websites or writing our magazine articles or doing our homework, the world keeps turning, and 32 people are fatally shot at a school in West Virginia before the killer turns the gun on himself. We pick through every shred of evidence, tangential or not, trying to pinpoint what video games or music or law passed by the other side is to blame. We eat up media time with every new development, speculating without having the full picture, blaming anyone that seems to fit our idea of the bad guy. If he’s Korean, then by god all you Orientals are under the suspicious eye. And hey, aren’t most Koreans Muslim, anyway? Continue reading “Sensitivity gradient”

Why am I watching this? Why? It’s not unlike a car wreck, where you’re horrified but part of you wants to see how bad it was, or maybe if someone you know is involved. Or porn, in the same ways.

And why are the losers reacting so violently? I can understand disappointment — we’ve all been in competition for something, and it’s a tremendous letdown to not win. It’s not the end of the world, it’s not death, it’s not anything worth crying about. The people that make it through to the very end and then lose? Okay, you’ve worked hard, and it certainly sucks more the closer to the finish line you fall. Been there, too.

Continue reading “American Idolatry”

I really hate zealots — really, really hate them. Can’t stand listening to them. I lose any valid points they might make in the blathering invective they spew.

This includes the Mac zealots — the ones who insist that PCs suck, and that Macs are better, period. PCs have no good use. Macs blow them out of the water. Macs are, in fact, the second coming of Christ and would, in fact, walk on water and heal the sick if only they had arms and legs — something I hear might be announced at next year’s MacWorld.

And I thought about writing something like this for about a year now, only Sarah did it better than me.

I dream of a follow up to the surgery commercial where it’s three years down the road and the PC is going back in for another upgrade and the Mac says goodbye, very sad. And the PC says, “Mac? It’s okay. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

And Mac says, “No, you won’t. They’ve got some new standards for me, so I won’t be coming back.”

So go read, now. Move along…

There are bookstores — I’ve been in them — that are treasure troves crossed with nightmares. You never know what you might find, but that’s primarily because you have no idea where to start looking — and gods help you if you are in search of something specific. There are boxes everywhere, on and under shelves that sag threateningly under the weight of piles of who-knows-what. Card tables are set up haphazardly, forming makeshift aisles. The walls of the maze are made up of even more books, magazines, and VHS tapes that probably have some vintage porn recorded on them.

Continue reading “Information Architecture”

I sat at the restaurant, one that I’ve frequented for years, and watched the floor manager try to placate the customer who got the new server on Friday night — you know, the one who probably shouldn’t be a server in the first place, but heard that it’s easy money and a good way to score drugs? She’s a little ditzy, definitely not cut out for a high volume weekend night shift, but she’s also a good kid, well-meaning and trying her best. She’s waited on me a number of times, and while I might question her abilities, I certainly can’t fault her attitude.

But this moron — and I say that in the old 1960s way, much the same way that people forty years from now will use the word “retarded” — is apparently suffering an aneurysm over the fact that he got unsweet tea instead of sweet, and that it’s taken five minutes longer than he expected to get his well done steak. His poor kids are shrinking underneath the table, while his wife eggs him on, both of them complaining that they’ve eaten here for a decade, at least, and they’ve never had service this bad, and how that girl doesn’t belong in a restaurant, much less a fine establishment such as this.

Continue reading “Well, someone’s always right. Odds are it ain’t you.”