Internally Erupting Description

Today, my friend Amazon sent me an e-mail, saying that because I've ordered or reviewed books by Jean Baudrillard (who?), I might like a book by Chris Turner (who?) called "Heartfelt: Internal Eruption" (huh?).

OK. So I click the link, where I am given a pop quiz:

"Do you believe in love? Have you ever had your heart broken? Have you ever struggled with letting go? Have you ever needed a second chance? Have you ever yearned to be together, yet were forced by the circumstances of life to be apart? Has your heart ever felt hopeless and out of breath? Have you ever just wanted more? Has your heart ever played music to the memories? Have you ever lost confidence somewhere along the way? Have you ever hurt the one you love? Have you ever wrestled with relationship commitment? Have you ever given your all in hopes of happiness . only to be left undervalued, saddened, and alone?"

Yes, this is all under the Book Description. And if you pass (fail?) the test, then:

"Let the voice of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption whisper into the ears of your soul. Let the authenticity of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption assist you in always facing the reality of the situation. Let the sincerity of Heartfelt: Internal Eruption move you into a state of confidence necessary to mature and eventually become better. Finally . believe in the miracles of God . life . restoration ... healing . Love . and you."

As John Hodgman (I'm now following him on Twitter) says, That Is All. (Whew.)

Once You Go Twitter, You Never Go Bitter

Good thing I don't have more than three deadlines this week, because I finally got around to checking out Twitter. Ye Gods. It's the social networking thang o' my dreams.

Do you loathe the chaotic sprawl of MySpace and Facebook? Does e-mailing everybody seems cumbersome? Has your own blog grown stale (I can't even scrape crumbs off this thing by now)? Why, yes, you do, it does, and yecch. And yet you feel the need to keep your hand out there flailing in cyberspace, just to make sure a few people know you're still on the planet, and vice-versa. Well, have I got a tweet deal for you.

It's simple (once you orient yourself). Quick (140 character max per update, or tweet). Austere, yet whimsical. Insert other wine-tasting terms here. And Twitter is peopled by smartypantses galore.

I'm not even snorting it, man, I'm mainlining. Finding hilarious and newsy stuff to follow, getting a profile photo (which I've never bothered to do here), pulling long people-to-people threads. Sent out a big email, mostly to workmates, but also a few friends I just haven't been able to keep up with, saying, here's how we can keep up. About a dozen or so signed on, though some have struggled with that initial sense of being out there alone, tied to the mast while sirens sing in the distance.

Or yodel. Man there's some funny out there. Two guys in particular have amused me no end. Joshua Allen spurns the quotidian "I'm just having coffee" tweet and creates goofy little scenes and character voices...

"Dawn. City Park. Five empty Manischewitz bottles. A loincloth made out of a yarmulke and dental floss. Today, I am a man. L'chaim, officers."

And Merlin Mann (host of "You Look Nice Today" on iTunes) documented the Olympic torch protests in the Bay Area this afternoon, viz:

"Hippies we spoke with say they want to fashion the torch into a 'sweet-ass lama bong,' for, quote, 'freedom and shit.' Back to you, Tom."

All this stuff fills your home page and heart with delight, once you find it and Follow.

Coolest of all (damn, I blew this as a segue from the previous post): my first follower/followee was Barack Obama. And you thought he was a mere leader.

The Antidote

If stupidity, racism, and careless bloviation are the disease, here's the cure. Obama's amazing speech on race, religion, and, really, the meaning of America:

By now, everyone's probably either seen it or read it. But if you just let it run while you're working on your computin' machine, it's like a salve that soothes while you sleep. Or you can read the transcript.

That's what I call presidential. If this guy doesn't deserve to lead the country, I'm not sure I want to live here.

Stupid Rhetoric Comes In Every Color

So now the forces of white-wing intolerance are decrying the Afrocentric intolerance of Jeremiah Wright, the pastor at Barack Obama’s church. And the old guy (one of those crazy-charismatic preachers in the call-and-response improv tradition of the black church) has gotten the boot from Obama’s campaign.

It’s about time. It was almost a year ago that I read in the NYT about Obama’s connection to Wright. Why has it taken so long for this to blow up? From what I can gather, the messages that have created the uproar are these:

1. America is a terrorist, racist state.
2. Islamic terrorism against the U.S. is thereby justified (“chickens coming home to roost”) even if it’s wrong.
3. White American oppression of blacks and other minorities is the root of all evil.
4. Hillary is just another rich, white person and can’t understand the African-American experience any better than McCain can.
5. “Not God BLESS America--God DAMN America.”

That last one, of course, is the one that has right-wingers foaming at the mouth.

Obama was on all the cable news shows last night, doing damage control, and I also saw Wright himself on Sham Hannity & All-Bland Colmes. Here’s what I took away from those interviews:

1. Wright is a scholar (he deftly, articulately dismantled criticisms of liberation theology) and a pretty sharp guy, considering how stupid the stuff is that he’s been saying to wind people up over the last five years or so.
2. Obama repudiates these particular messages but not Wright himself. He says that would be like kicking an uncle out of your family because you disagree with him.
3. Obama says Wright is the guy who “brought me to Jesus, brought me to church,” and that he married the Obamas and baptized their daughters. He also says Wright was about to retire when Obama first caught wind of some of these statements. Apparently, this is why Obama hasn't left the congregation.
4. Obama claims that he’s never been present in the church when this kind of message has been delivered by Wright or anyone else, and that if he had, he’d have expressed his disagreement then and there. He says it’s a social justice ministry, and that all he’s heard coming from the pulpit is talk about “Jesus, faith, and helping the poor.”
5. This won’t end here.

If Obama gets the nomination, I bet there'll be 527 groups all over this issue, and at least one of them will land a Swift Boat punch. I really think this crap could be the undoing of the most amazing political moment since 1968. If not, if he survives this, it’s yet another stunning accomplishment by the calmest, fastest-learning man in politics.

Part of me thinks: See how stupid religion is? Look what happens when people stop doubting and get too sure of their own sense of what’s righteous and what’s not. And part of me thinks, isn't religion great, that it can so infatuate people with the noise of their own passionate truths, they don't even pay attention to how stupid they sound? And part of me thinks it could be worse. The preacher could’ve been Fred Phelps.

In his first book, Obama eloquently describes the moment when Wright won him over, with the “Audacity of Hope” sermon (which gave Obama the title for his second book), making a connection between the struggle of the poor with Biblical stories of faith, perseverance, and salvation. As profound and defining as that moment may have been for Obama, the truth is, I wish he’d remained a skeptic.

Wow, Vampire Weekend

My friend Stacey sent me a link to the catchiest, most kinetic music video in recent memory. Two-and-a-half minutes of irrepressible joy.

It reminds me of the early Police, back when they were making really great, thumpy, zippity music and having fun in front of a video camera. "De-Doo-Doo-Doo, De-Da-Da-Da," anyone?

What kills me is the idea that there are dozens of little bands out there, doing bang-up numbers like this, and there's just not enough time to listen or watch or even think about it.

Food of love (and finger-puppet fish), play on.

So Cool, It's Frozen

Why is this so utterly freakin' cool?

I have theories:
1. Because of the scale of the mischief.
2. Because it's disruptive, but essentially harmless.
3. Because of the way it forces a shift in awareness--the wonder and curiosity it elicits.
4. Because of the tension between opposites: stasis amid movement, pointlessness amid purpose, precision amid chaos, art amid commerce, a moment of timelessness in a place that's all about schedules, the unexpected monkey wrench thrown into the quotidian works.
5. Because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end—Aristotelian beauty—and each has a different effect.

Maybe the point about pointlessness is the real thing here. Can something be beautiful just because it's pointless?

William Carlos Williams has a poem that answers: Yes. Here's the first half of "The Crowd At The Ball Game":

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

(Nice poem, up to there, and then he kind of loses it, if you ask me.) The ball game is the freeze and the crowd is everybody in Grand Central who's not in on the joke—and the beauty of the crowd = the details of their response. Don't you just love the looks of bewilderment on their faces, the guy poking that frozen girl in the arm, the driver honking and radioing for help, and that great remark at the end by the guy who thought maybe he was the only one seeing it happen? Fabulous.

Up with pointless acts of mind-fuckery! Up with Improv Everywhere!

Bush Comes To Hallmark

Streets blocked, parking lots closed, sniffer dogs sniffin', a motorcade a quarter-mile long (including armored SWAT vehicles, an ambulance, and sinister SUVs with weird black cylinders on the roof), and curtains of tarps hung from outdoor walkways to prevent a long-distance sighting through a rifle scope. Not to give you whiplash after my last post about Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, but thus arrives George Bush the younger, trailing clouds of much ado about not much.

He was here to make a speech on the state of the economy to a select group of Hallmark employees. At this point, I think "make a speech on the state the economy" means "convince people that there's gold in them thar turds." I was not invited, but I saw a lot of the security detail at work outside my window.

While he was here, the president apparently made a card at Kaleidoscope, our creativity workshop for kids, asking a group of reporters, "Who deserves a valentine?" I guess love is just not gonna be unconditional with this guy.

At the Hallmark visitors center, he had a brief run-in with Maxine, our beloved curmatron, viz.:

I'm trying to imagine what words of wisdom she might have about the experience...

"When life give you lemons, blame Florida."