49ers in the Super Bowl

about "Open" by Andre Agassi

When it was released, this autobiography by American tennis player Andre Agassi was scandalous for the insulated world of professional tennis--a sport in which cussing umpires is a serious offense. The scandal was that Agassi confesses to experimenting with meth, a hard amphetamine, during his pro career. Truth is he did it twice, mostly out of boredom on the spur of the moment. And while high, all he really did was clean his house. So controversy is not the real story--that's the advertising.

The real story is that Agassi, like most other tennis pros, was mercilessly raised to succeed in professional tennis. His father drilled him on a home court everyday for years. Forever after Agassi resented his father and hated tennis. Nevertheless the experience left Agassi super-competitive and as he came of age he desperately wanted the coveted rankings of more consistent players in his era like Pete Sampras, his main rival. Unsurprisingly, Agassi traces his own inconsistent performance (more than once he fell from the top to the bottom) to his lack of confidence and poor sense of self. But these flaws, though nearly universal in their appeal, are never fully explored in Open.

The book's gossipy nuggets are these: Agassi hated Jim Courier until retirement (now they're friends); he never liked Michael Chang, chafing at the way Chang repeatedly thanked God every time he won; he declares Jimmy Conners a major irredeemable asshole (a judgement corroborated by many others); and he thinks Sampras, his career-long rival, is robotic, focused solely on tennis to the exclusion of all else. Ironically, Agassi's first wife, Christie Brinkley, seems to think the same of Agassi--that he's guilty of tennis tunnel-vision. Agassi doesn't seem to notice this irony. Ultimately the high-profile couple separated because they had nothing in common and each of them was focused on their respective careers.

This was a fine book, a good tour through a tennis life, but Agassi's Open is further evidence that autobiographies by musicians and, more so, athletes, are often boring. These gifted people have a hyper-focused passion and goal--to be the best, and they rarely put in the time and get the perspective needed to examine and expand their story into an insightful dialectic ready for the bookshelves.

"Society Must Be Defended", lectures by Michel Foucault

(longer post)

I've been reading this Michel Foucault lecture series. In them, he reminds the audience that his concept of power has changed since he debuted with his seminal works on madness and punishment. He sees power not so much as represented in instances of repression, but rather a flow or current between actors, a concept better represented as two actors engaged in battle. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault explores the concept of war and its historical relation to the role of the nation state and its population's identity.

That Foucault adopts a new concept of power after having written his early works does not devalue them. Foucault's project has not changed: generally, he engages in an archaeological exploration of Western man's conceptual relation to himself and others; specifically, he analyzes how some people engineer and/or assume apparatuses of power used on other people, focusing on the post-Middle Ages emergence of kinds of knowledge and systems of disciplinary power.

In Society Must Be Defended, he begins by asserting that, circa 1600, Europeans began assessing their own history in terms of race and war, whereas previously they self-identified in the person and bloodline of the sovereign and spoke of the Roman history in which they lived. So, what were once mere hiccups within the Roman Empire now signified the coming of the Franks, Gauls, Celts, and so on. The key for Foucault here is not the races or inter-European racism to come, but the idea of (potential) revolution and the political historization of the peopled nation state that emerges and casts itself as the rightful inheritor of sovereignty and greatness, with the distressed and disenfranchised newly identifying themselves as people on the losing end of a historical injustice.

The change in historical perspective is initiated by a shift at the top: the nobility assume power over the education of the monarchy, a role previously held by judges and (accounting) clerks appointed by the sovereign. This education, which centers on history, organizes the past--and, therefore, the present--around "society" rather than royal lineages. And, so it goes, with the nation no longer identified in the body of the king, a new focus on society yields limited concepts of nationalism, race, and class. Of course, society was being narrowly defined around the culture of the previously distressed and disenfranchised nobles (the bourgeoisie, presumably).

Then, yet another shift occurs: a culture with arts, agriculture, trade, and industry becomes a precondition for nationhood. A nation's legitimization is complete once it has a legislature and law. Society no longer just constitutes the nation--it runs it (or, rather, the bourgeoisie runs it, presumably). Finally, with the recognition of society as the bellwether of the nation state, we find institutions of power concerning themselves with the biological phenomena of the social body, thereby giving birth to what Foucault famously calls biopower. Very nice.

In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault gives a history of Western Europe, recounting legends told from the Middle Ages on and narrating this shift in discourses on power, history, and the State. This narration does get bogged down in details (and more than a little confused), so this lecture series is a difficult read unless you're especially interested.

Notes:

• This shift to a politicized historical discourse coincides with a larger movement re-organizing and, eventually, licensing knowledges.

• Foucault's work usually involves describing some major shift in focus and narrative that followed the Middle Ages. When reading him, I'm often a little disappointed he doesn't spend more time describing the systems being displaced or forgotten. And, as a rule, I'm always a little skeptical when someone argues that something major has changed or some new age is dawning, etc., so this can make Foucault's work hard to square when I find myself needing more information.

I know a seagull

I know a seagull. He watches me uncaringly. Sometimes when he flies the sky warms from a restless midnight ink to a delicate warm peach speckled heaven blue. He is overhead now. Hello again, Seagull.

I see only his silhouette. He sees me old, yellow papery skin against starched, white hospital sheets, brain turning watery, back aching. He sees me standing atop the neighbor's woodpile, dressed in Superman pajamas, hands on hips and chest puffed out. Seagull and I, we are lifetime companions now.

about "Society Must Be Defended", lectures by Michel Foucault

I've been reading this Michel Foucault lecture series. In them, he reminds the audience that his concept of power has changed since he debuted with his seminal works on madness and punishment. Now he sees power not so much as represented in instances of repression, but rather as a flow or current between actors, a concept better represented as two actors engaged in battle. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault explores this concept of battle, of war and its historical relation to the role of the nation State and its population's identity.

That Foucault adopts a new concept of power after having written his early works does not devalue them. Foucault's project has not changed: generally, he engages in an archaeological exploration of Western man's relation to himself; specifically, he analyzes how some people engineer and/or assume apparatuses of power used on other people.

The soap opera continues, has only just begun

Last night Dallas Morning News staff photographer Michael Ainsworth captured an anguished Tony Romo pacing the sideline after throwing an interception. This picture is brilliant. Not only does it speak volumes about one man and his pain and feelings of inferiority, but it emphasizes the wonderful drama of sports. The action and athleticism are great but they're icing on the cake. The collective and personal drama is what keeps fans coming back for more, even after their team blows it on the big stage (yet again). The struggle, the triumph, and, here, the tragedy.

Look closely at this picture. That is a tortured look on his face.


Notes:

• Faith: You don't believe in a proven quarterback--you rely on him; so it is only now that I know he felt loss so acutely, knows loss so intimately, that I can believe in Tony Romo. The team will be worse next year, looks like. But, nevertheless.

about a Snickers, in five bites

I see before me a man who wants to enjoy his Snickers bar. He is very different from the man I saw before me earlier, who set himself in the airport chair by gate 25 to eat a whole sleeve of Oreo cookies. No, this Snickers man takes just two bites of his candy bar before takeoff; the next two bites will power him through the airport, and what the last bite is for only this slender man so efficiently built knows.

Obama's speech at the service in Newtown

The President's December 16, 2012, address in Newtown is one of the more compelling, well-written editions of recent Obama speeches, which is pretty weird considering it argues for a policy he doesn't totally agree with, on an issue he doesn't care much about.

First Obama obligatorily memorializes the occasion by redescribing the tragic events and the redeeming moments within them. Then he says,

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

This change he refers to is a fundamental one concerning our culture and its relation to guns, individualism, and violence--something not easily changed. So how does a President / lawyer / legislator start us on the road towards such a change? Through legislation:

We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

The kind of legislation he has in mind, gun control, was not previously on his agenda, so to him it isn't the most appealing option, and he seems to doubt that it will even be all that effective; but he sees it as a means, the most obvious place to begin effecting a cultural change immediately:

If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.

... We know that, no matter how good our intentions, we’ll all stumble sometimes in some way.

We’ll make mistakes, we’ll experience hardships and even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.

There you have it: although it may not work as intended, new gun control legislation is something he thinks he can start on now, but he hopes other, better options will be revealed in the days ahead. Of course, though he's not the first, last, or only person to ever float such a message, Obama's talk of cultural change fuels his many detractors, those Conservatives whose ideological allegiance grows with their sense that policies traditionally deemed Liberal are now destroying their way of life.


Notes:

• It does seem strange that he would be arguing policy at a memorial service.

• My favorite part of this is far and away the following:

You know, someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.

With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t -- that we can’t always be there for them.

They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.

Security and the lack

Note 1: After investigating the Benghazi attack at the US Embassy in Libya which left dead four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the Accountability Review Board, appointed by secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has "concluded that the State Department suffered 'systemic failures' in providing adequate security". Security is a question in answer to a question; it asks, Is this enough? What else do we need to do? The question is unanswerable in definite.

Note 2: After the Newtown elementary school shooting which left 20 children and six adults dead, Connecticut's Chief Medical Examiner is examining the gunman's corpse for genetic clues that might explain his heinous act. He will find something, no matter what.

Because school shootings, especially Adam Lanza's, exist so outside our established schemas for knowing, lots of disciplines quickly invite themselves into the conversation, primarily education, mental health, genetics, forensic science, security, law, parental and child psychology, and religion. All these vie for control of the conversation, and all are entertained by death, all pretend to speak for the death and madness who speak languages we don't understand.

about "The Devil All the Time" by Donald Ray Pollock

Pairing sequences occurring almost twenty years apart, first circa 1945, then '65, Donald Ray Pollock cross-wires the impoverished paths of a number of strong Appalachian characters. The Devil All the Time is one of the best fiction reads I've had in awhile in terms of plot and character strength. Thematically the pages are consumed in the filthy marriage of poverty, religious faith, and depravity. Being from the region, Pollock has an intimate feel for the darker shadows of this landscape which he exploits to full effect here. The last four section/chapters were actual fucking page-turners.

Starve

 
He's about nine, curly hair and brown skin, and I saw him climbing out of the creek with two small, pale fish on a line.

Wow!

It wasn't hard, he said, confident. I put the line in and they swam right to it.

Cicadas suffocated us in the heat. Man. What are you gonna do with them?

I don't know.

I had the impression he wished he had a better answer. But I thought, No, I get it. Perfect answer to a stupid question. Fishing was something to do. The fish are beside the point.

49ers 27 - Dolphins 13

about "What Becomes" by A. L. Kennedy

The dozen short stories in A. L. Kennedy's What Becomes depict ordinary people caught navigating a few moments in extraordinary pain. Kennedy's prose is pure, a gentle blend of proper-sounding English and freshly worded insights, and her dialog and breaks are organized efficiently, so the reading goes smoothly. That said, the laser focus on these distracted and emotionally crippled people gets heavy after a few stories, despite a few spliced-in bits of humor. Great for people who want to read sad things.

something about the movie "Lincoln"

"Lincoln" focuses on the President's efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment while negotiating the end of the Civil War. A superb Daniel Day-Lewis evokes a gifted but earthen man veiled in melancholy, defending the bloody and nightmarish warring to save the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation, and his push to eradicate slavery via the Constitution immediately, while the battle still rages. All of the supporting players more than hold their own--Sally Field included.

In all that's already been written about this film, only one point could still be made: this entry from The New Yorker--one of a couple excellent comments on the film found there--claims

It can’t be said too often, or too clearly, that the whole point of Lincoln is that he—and the Republican Party he then represented—marked the end of the policy of conciliation and compromise and cosseting that had been the general approach of Northern Presidents to the Southern slavery problem throughout the decades before. When the South seceded, Lincoln chose war—an all-out, brutal, bitter war of a kind that had never been fought until then.

According to the film, Lincoln felt the 13th Amendment was a compromise. Had they not compromised, the radical faction of the Republican Party (and their abolitionist constituents) would have enfranchised black men immediately, given them the vote, legalized interracial marriage, etc. A huge portion of the film is dedicated to Lincoln's pissing off those radicals. (But this "compromise" means little when it obliterates an entire region's economic way of life, which is probably The New Yorker writer's point.)

about "Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the College de France, 1973-1974" by Michel Foucault

In these lectures, Foucault defines psychiatric power as "that supplement of power by which the real is imposed on madness in the name of a truth possessed once and for all by this power in the name of medical science, of psychiatry". This definition hints at the areas Foucault explores: reality and truth, systems of power, and the disciplines of science and the human sciences. The lectures serve as an important follow up and, in some key respects, an amendment to his early work, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Reading this and staying engaged was a struggle. The reason for that is largely a matter of context: the practice of psychiatry (and administration of asylums) and the schools of thought therein have a complicated and rich history in Europe, particularly in France and Italy. Foucault digs into and entrenches himself in that history, but, as a student, there is no required preliminary reading to reference. Nevertheless, Foucault does impart many insightful points of brilliance:

• The appropriation and use of reality as a form of power

• The medicalization of children, and the creation and expansion of the concept of development as it pertains to rationality and moralizing, retardation, madness, and defining the normal and abnormal

• Foucault's redefining the abnormal, the retarded, etc, as individuals who act on instinct

• How psychiatry changed from a practice that confined, controlled, and sometimes corrected madness to a power that defines, controls, and sometimes corrects the abnormal, thereby expanding its power into the domain of normality

• The role of psychiatry and asylum administration in capitalism and maintenance of the workforce

• How medical science provides justification and grounds for power, but does not inform psychiatric practice

• The history of the concept of truth, and truth's development and role in science

This is not be a good starting read for people interested in Foucault. And people interested in pschiatry (or anti-psychiatry) should probably also not read this without some background in Foucault.

Note

• The edition I have does offer some good historical context on psychiatry.

a thing about the movie "Flight" (with spoilers)

Flight follows William "Whip" Whitaker, a crackerjack airline pilot struggling to admit to his alcohol and drug addictions in the aftermath of a plane crash. Part of the immediate dilemma for the audience and for Whitaker is that (1) the crash resulted from hardware failures, not pilot error, and (2) no other pilot could have negotiated the crash landing with as much skill, and saved as many passengers' lives as he did, sober or otherwise.

The film is about one man's struggle for redemption, but what we see from our theater seat is a struggle for control of truth. In Whitaker's mind, his functionality, his brilliance excuses the behavior that so many rush to judge irresponsible. That is his truth. But under threat of litigation and penalty for the lives lost, the airline and Whitaker's other adversaries use the discourse of medical knowledge, appealing to that discipline's knowledge-making authority, which justifies policies that were violated, and deems Whitaker unfit. The co-pilot, who chooses not to reveal Whitaker's drunkenness on record, appeals to the Word of God; God reveals the Truth, and Whitaker must face that truth.

Finally, after a slew of verbal confrontations, Whitaker is faced with the most intimidating of rhetorical situations--a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent Federal agency "charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States". Here, Whitaker surrenders control of the truth. He cannot speak another lie, he says. Whitaker's truth goes from belief in himself with a confident rejection of medico-juridical labels to, ultimately, the discourse of confession. He adopts the narratives spun about him by others, and finds himself now a craven denier of truth, and no longer a hero airline pilot.

Notes

• This was a fantastic movie. Every performance is spot on; Whitaker is played to perfection by Denzel Washington, and even John Goodman's over-the-top dealer works well, providing relief from the main character's ongoing struggles and tension. And Wikipedia notes, "Flight is (Robert) Zemeckis' first live-action film since 2000's Cast Away and What Lies Beneath, and his first R-rated film since Used Cars in 1980."

• Above, quoting the NTSB's Web site regarding the agency's purpose.

Rihanna singing "Diamonds" on SNL

Wittgenstein's seven propsitions from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"

1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function. (formula given) This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

This you already know

Pre-election coverage foregrounds and makes estimations. The pundit sits in the middle of a mass of cross-talk, intercepting, expounding and proliferating meanings within the discourse that flows between and among candidates and the audience. In this analysis, the audience is parsed, filtered, separated out into segments that each have their own traits and values that call for individualized treatment from the candidates.

Then, after the big night, post-election coverage sets about interpreting new, limited sets of meanings, and projects them into the near and distant future. This analysis diagnoses the population using the tools of cohesion and normalization. The segments of people are recognized as key segments, but their numbers add up to a whole.

All this coverage depicts a scene in which, prior to election day, the candidates' message descends and swirls down within the electorate. Post-election, the message is sent from below, up to the risers on which sit the podiums and punditry chairs.

Who is the pundit? Who is qualified to be a pundit? Generally, a pundit must be someone who either (1) practices journalism for a publication of certain status, (2) someone who previously held a high-ish public office, or (3) someone who attained some celebrity while incorporated in a political campaign or party. As currently used, the word "pundit" appears to be a term of soft derision that depersonalizes the speaker, and casts them as coincidentally filling a seat that could be filled by so many. To call someone a pundit is to say, "Take their words with a grain of salt". In effect, this can serve to disqualify them while situating them within a dysfunctional machine.

But we have different kinds of pundits who serve different functions. Some speak for voters and are allegiant to one side. Others attempt to refocus, summarize, and speak of political events, trends, and developments when prompted. And now there is an elite.

First in 2008 but more so in 2012, Nate Silver of 538 emerged from the pundit crowd. The left has endowed him with a version of the Author function. His predictions (which cannot account for the unpredictable) draw credibility both from his name and from the nameless science purportedly behind him. The author name means nothing on a scientific paper; but Silver's work has his name, and seems to live on the weight of his name and on the namelessness of his numbers.

Notes:

In the middle of his victory speech, Obama, in his general, high rhetorical way, espoused a a key principal and belief that undergirds whatever his political philosophy is:

America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

about "White Noise" by Don DeLillo

White Noise follows events surrounding a Midwest college professor, with much attention given to his family, a Brady Bunch-type arrangement. Our professor, Jack Gladney, is known for his unique academic departmental creation, Hitler Studies; this bit matters because it embodies a major theme in the novel: information overload--how each and every thing is problematized and probed and its hidden data and meaning is wrung out, spilling out into the air. Each source is inexhaustible, but ultimately, exhausted, you wonder whether all this data mining yielded knowledge or pollution.

The novel's action and dialog is immersed in data: trivia, reports, news, questions, answers, rhetorical questions, interrogations, analysis, meta analysis, educated guesses, second guesses, and so on. In the narrative, this information overload is symbolized by a toxic cloud that materializes over the town after a train wreck and chemical spill. The threat prompts a second theme (also represented in the cloud): fear of death. Jack Gladney is exposed to the cloud for perhaps too long and a fear of death sets in. But, after the real toxic cloud dissolves in microbiotic fury, Gladney learns his wife has struggled with an intense fear of death for months, and that she even sought help for it through an obscure, experimental pharmaceutical trial, taking pills to cure the fear. After dragging along these plot points for a time, at the end, out of nowhere, the novel takes a bizarre twist involving a murder attempt.

The characters are unrealistic and unlikable, each taking turns dismissing whatever the other characters choose to dwell on. They are all stupid quirky buffoons with no bullshit threshold. The cloud event is ridiculous because it starts out catastrophic but is quickly dealt with and rarely mentioned again. Gradually, during the reading I lost all motivation to consider the novel seriously.

Notes:

• The novel says nothing about it, but "information overload" might be one of those fears that pops up every couple generations.