The Final Frontier…

I let the 20th anniversary of the Challenger accident pass without comment, which was stupid of me. It was one of those instances where I can remember with perfect clarity exactly where I was when the news reached me. I was in a bookstore. The two books I purchased that day were Stalking the Nightmare by Harlan Ellison and Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein, a duo that has always struck me as a creepy sort of synchronicity.

I’m a huge fan of manned space exploration–always have been–but I’ve never liked the Space Shuttle.  The shuttle is, and always has been, a boondoggle. It’s tremendously wasteful, even considering the reusability of the vehicle. Additionally, the shuttle was designed to go to the wrong place. It was designed to go to low-earth orbit, which means that any satellite payload that needed to go into high-earth orbit had to have an engine of its own. Low-earth orbits are still in the thermosphere (the outermost layer of the atmosphere), which means that there is a gradual drag on anything put there. Those orbits decay; those satellites, left to their own devices, fall back to Earth.

Plus, as we have seen, the shuttle is unsafe. Mind you, expendable rockets aren’t exactly the safest proposition in the world and I’m sure that, eventually, NASA’s luck would have run out, but expendable rockets are cheaper than the shuttle. An accident with an expendable rocket would not cripple the agency itself. As it is, the catastrophic shuttle accidents have effectively blown a six-year hole in the manned space program. It galls me that the next logical step in space exploration after the Apollo missions was not taken. We could be living and working on the moon and in the asteroids even now. Instead, we poured money into the shuttle.

I believe that we must go into space. Human beings WILL go into space eventually. The rewards of going into space are potentially so vast that it’s almost inevitable. I’m even willing to grant that space exploration and colonization is a generational process (which makes it a dicey political liability to a government with periodic elections). Perhaps the Libertarians are right and it should be left to private enterprise. When Spaceship 1 took the X-prize last year, it may have been the biggest story ignored by the general public. Or maybe not: businesses are held hostage to the quarterly report in the same way that politicians are hostage to the electorate. 

In truth, I hate the idea that the United States is in a position to become the Portugal of the 20th and 21st centuries. Portugal explored the world. They did all the legwork. But it was the Spanish and the English who seized it all.

Enjoy.

Thoughts on an Electric Ladyland….

Ronnie is in fine form right now, in full, blue-in-the-face tirade mode  . The object of her ire is the concept of the internet chat room as a ghetto. I think she has something there, but mainly because I’ve been mulling over something I saw Kurt Vonnegut say a few days ago:

“Electronic communities build nothing,” Vonnegut said. “You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.”

To my mind, this is what is called a “superposition” in quantum physics, a state in which two contrary states of being exists at the same time. Is light a wave or a particle? Well, to an extent it’s both. I think Vonnegut is right, in sofar as we are “dancing animals,” but I think he is wrong, too.

In and of itself, all of these phosphor dots that describe cyberspace are merely specks of radiation made visible. They are less than nothing. We are building nothing that lasts in cyberspace. Powerful solar flares could wipe all of this stuff out in a heartbeat, to say nothing of the march of planned obsolescence. Will the computers twenty years from now be able to read all this crap? Do you still have a record player capable of playing a 78 rpm record? Less than nothing, indeed. Books we can decode, be they cuneform tablets or bound codices. But binary digits that mean something only to a specific machine built at a specific point in time?

On the other hand, though–and this is a point that Vonnegut misses (deliberately or otherwise)–this technology changes behavior. All technology changes behavior in one way or another. Often, the changes brought about by technology are completely unforseen. Who knew that the internal combustion engine would change the mating habits of teenagers? In 1965, the science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, postulated that “There is some new gadget in existence today which will prove equally revolutionary [to sexual mores, compared to the back seat of an automobile] in some way equally unexpected. You and I both know this gadget by name and by function–but we don’t know which one it is nor what its unexpected effect will be.” In 1980, Heinlein suggested that that gadget was the computer chip. Prescient, wasn’t he? Of course, Heinlein was timid in this prediction (and probably knew it). Think of the changes in behaviour that the computer has wrought! Saturday night, for example, I made peanut satay sauce for a curried chicken dinner. Without the internet, I doubt I would even know what the hell that was. My family was strictly an Irish meat and potatoes family when I grew up. But not only do I know what it is now–and like it–but I know how to make it. How many people who are plugged into the internet only listen to one kind of music? I sure don’t.

In short, “electronic communities” are agents of change, even if they don’t build anything. Unless you count “change” as something. But I’m digressing far and wide from what I want to talk about. Let’s take on Ronnie’s post:

“And because I didn’t like feeling like a zero, I made it my duty to greet every single person who entered that room: old friend, stranger, picture, pictureless, hot, not, t-girl, admirer.  And when someone said goodbye, I did my best to wish them a farewell.  Everyone likes to be acknowledged.  No-one wants to be ignored.  If they did, they wouldn’t enter a chat room.

I stuck with that policy for nearly 10 years.  Now, more often than not, if I go into the chatroom, I enter through a back door, and lurk, only having private conversations with a few close friends.”

Ronnie is referring to Sarah West’s chat room . When I first discovered Sarah’s chat room (and chat rooms in general), I was in them constantly. Many a long night was spent there (nights that, in retrospect, may have been better spent writing a novel or painting, or whatnot). Nowadays, I’m like Ronnie: in through the back door, chatting in private with select friends. For many of the same reasons, I might add. Unlike Ronnie, I don’t blame this behavior on “psychic vampires,” though I know exactly what she’s talking about. For me, its a matter of getting what I needed, then not needing it anymore.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that Sarah’s chat room changed my life. While it is true that I was in the process of changing my life in the first place, the chat room put me on a fast track to where I am now: a much happier, much healthier person than I was then. I was able to find what I needed there, what I couldn’t find in my immediate “real life” surroundings: other people who were just like me. Other people with whom I had a common experience. But when I lurk in chat rooms these days, I get the feeling that many of the people there still haven’t found what they are looking for, whether it’s self-acceptance, romance, sex, whatever. I think Ronnie has a point when she suggests that they will never have that unless they move out of the chatroom and into the real world. What Ronnie leaves unsaid, though, is the fact that the chatroom has the potential to push a body out the door. That’s what happened to me, anyway. I wanted to meet the people I “met” in the chatroom. So I did.

As a side note: has it occured to anyone that a weblog like this one is a slow-motion version of a chatroom?  Something to consider.

Cheers.

Dangerous Technologies

As Europe and the United States prepare to take action against Iran’s nascent nuclear program, I have to ask: Where the hell was the UN when Japan was creating karaoke?  This horrifying technology has spread unchecked through the world with nary a quibble from the Security Council.

So, I finally got out of the house tonight. It seems like forever since I’ve been out. The occasion was a birthday celebration for someone I know in the leather community. The festivities were held at  a local gay bar that I have never visited before. Little did I know the abject horror that awaited me. Along around 9:00 pm, the bartender brought out the Big Book o’ Karaoke, and soon, we were treated to a rendition of “Don’t it Turn My Brown Eyes Blue” by a hippopotamic lesbian whose nasal voice hit every note about three keys to the left of where it should have been. The renditions that followed were cacophic attrocities that might be of interest to the CIA if they are looking for new torture methods that don’t leave physical marks. The low point was a sour harmony of two leather bears singing Stevie Nicks’s/Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” a song never intended for male voices, and certainly never intended for an adenoidal tenor and a a basso profundo. But there you are.

The night wasn’t a total loss, though. One of my friend’s friends was on hand with his new piercings, just now healed enough to show off. Ten barbells up the underside of his penis. The things one sees when one ventures out of the house.

Hoodoo the Voodoo!

The NFL playoffs. If you watched them this weekend, you watched some of the most bizarre football games ever played. Here’s what I think actually happened:

Las Vegas. A shifty big time gambler slips into the back-door at a Cajun restaurant and is guided to the back room. There, one of the disciples of Marie Laveau, a wizzened black woman with no teeth in her head, waits with a case full of dolls. “Did you bring the money?” she asks. The gambler places an aluminum briefcase on the table. The woman smiles toothlessly. “Here are the dolls.”

After a close inspection, the gambler says: “Wait a minute. Half of these dolls are referees.”  The woman shrugs broadly. “What can I do? I didn’t have time to do things right.” The gambler thinks for a second. “Okay, but it’s going to look awfully suspicious. At least I have dolls for Brady and Manning.” The woman dismisses the gambler. The gambler mumbles to himself as he heads back to his suite at the Tangiers: “How can I make this look natural?”

Obviously, he failed. I hope he got good odds.

Cheers.

After a long hiatus, Christi\’s movie picks return!

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1137305802-hr-1861.jpg\”

I\’ve been bad. I\’ve been falling down on the job. I haven\’t been keeping up with my movie picks over the holidays. I guess you\’ll just have to send someone over to spank me.

In any event, on to today\’s movie…

When Strangers on A Train was released in 1951, its director, the great Alfred Hitchcock was entering his most creative decade as a filmmaker. To an extent, this film was the opening salvo. It\’s almost the perfect Hitchcock movie. It examines almost all of Hitchcock\’s primary themes in depth, from the \”innocent man wrongly accused\”  to the \”good man wracked by guilt, \” and so forth. It is also Hitchcock\’s most thorough examination of the doppleganger, an examination that is established in the film\’s brilliant opening sequence, in which the camera follows the feet of our dual protagonists, tennis pro Guy Haines and psycho Bruno Anthony, showing only their feet. Their feet tell us volumes about each man: Bruno is flamboyant and just a bit off. Guy is staid and repressed. Bruno introduces himself to Guy and offers a proposition: both of them have someone they would like to be rid of, so why not \”trade\” murders? Bruno offers to murder Guy\’s slattern wife, while asking Guy to murder his father in return. Guy laughs it off, but Bruno is deadly serious. Thus the cat and mouse game begins.

Thereafter, Bruno becomes Guy\’s shadow self. Guy certainly wanted his wife, Miriam, dead. He wanted it enough so that he is wracked with guilt over it once Bruno kills her. But there are other doppelgangers to be found in the film. Guy\’s wife and his girlfriend, Anne, are two sides of the coin, while Anne\’s sister is a physical double of Guy\’s wife (so much so that she sends Bruno into a cataleptic fit). The most flamboyant shot in the movie offers us doubles, as Miriam\’s murder is reflected in both lenses of her glasses.

Hitchcock isn\’t usually thought of as a director of film noir–his films are far too slick for purists–but Strangers on a Train is film noir to the core. Guy is a classic film noir protagonist, guilty even in his innocence, a victim of circumstances beyond his control. There\’s a wonderful shot just after Bruno murders Miriam in which Guy is hiding behind an iron gate as he talks with Anne. He\’s penned in in this shot, a prisoner of his guilt. When Anne becomes a party to his guilt, she steps behind the gate with him. And once again, they\’re doubles, and absolutely in the world of film noir. The European cut of the film suggests that Bruno is a homosexual, and that his relationship with Guy is more than just a game of cat and mouse. Hitchcock  subtly plays this from the other side of the equation by casting Farley Granger as Guy, an actor he previously cast as one of the (implicitly) gay murderers in Rope. This reading of the film recasts Bruno from psychopath into \”homme\” fatale.

A final note about the book by Patricia Highsmith on which this film is based. Hitchcock and his screenwriters (including Raymond Chandler!) took some liberties with the material. The ending of the film is very different from the ending in the book: in the movie, Guy never seriously consideres murdering Bruno\’s father. In the book, things are a different matter altogether…

After a long hiatus, Christi\’s movie picks return!

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1137305802-hr-186.jpg\”

I\’ve been bad. I\’ve been falling down on the job. I haven\’t been keeping up with my movie picks over the holidays. I guess you\’ll just have to send someone over to spank me.

In any event, on to today\’s movie…

When Strangers on A Train was released in 1951, its director, the great Alfred Hitchcock was entering his most creative decade as a filmmaker. To an extent, this film was the opening salvo. It\’s almost the perfect Hitchcock movie. It examines almost all of Hitchcock\’s primary themes in depth, from the \”innocent man wrongly accused\”  to the \”good man wracked by guilt, \” and so forth. It is also Hitchcock\’s most thorough examination of the doppleganger, an examination that is established in the film\’s brilliant opening sequence, in which the camera follows the feet of our dual protagonists, tennis pro Guy Haines and psycho Bruno Anthony, showing only their feet. Their feet tell us volumes about each man: Bruno is flamboyant and just a bit off. Guy is staid and repressed. Bruno introduces himself to Guy and offers a proposition: both of them have someone they would like to be rid of, so why not \”trade\” murders? Bruno offers to murder Guy\’s slattern wife, while asking Guy to murder his father in return. Guy laughs it off, but Bruno is deadly serious. Thus the cat and mouse game begins.

Thereafter, Bruno becomes Guy\’s shadow self. Guy certainly wanted his wife, Miriam, dead. He wanted it enough so that he is wracked with guilt over it once Bruno kills her. But there are other doppelgangers to be found in the film. Guy\’s wife and his girlfriend, Anne, are two sides of the coin, while Anne\’s sister is a physical double of Guy\’s wife (so much so that she sends Bruno into a cataleptic fit). The most flamboyant shot in the movie offers us doubles, as Miriam\’s murder is reflected in both lenses of her glasses.

Hitchcock isn\’t usually thought of as a director of film noir–his films are far too slick for purists–but Strangers on a Train is film noir to the core. Guy is a classic film noir protagonist, guilty even in his innocence, a victim of circumstances beyond his control. There\’s a wonderful shot just after Bruno murders Miriam in which Guy is hiding behind an iron gate as he talks with Anne. He\’s penned in in this shot, a prisoner of his guilt. When Anne becomes a party to his guilt, she steps behind the gate with him. And once again, they\’re doubles, and absolutely in the world of film noir. The European cut of the film suggests that Bruno is a homosexual, and that his relationship with Guy is more than just a game of cat and mouse. Hitchcock  subtly plays this from the other side of the equation by casting Farley Granger as Guy, an actor he previously cast as one of the (implicitly) gay murderers in Rope. This reading of the film recasts Bruno from psychopath into \”homme\” fatale.

A final note about the book by Patricia Highsmith on which this film is based. Hitchcock and his screenwriters (including Raymond Chandler!) took some liberties with the material. The ending of the film is very different from the ending in the book: in the movie, Guy never seriously consideres murdering Bruno\’s father. In the book, things are a different matter altogether…

No Room at the Inn

So…..

After an initial couple of months of frequent invitations, they have trickled off. I still occasionally get invitations from Middle Eastern gentlement with no information on their pages, but in general, things are quiet. I theorize that this is because many people have filled their “friends” list, which makes me roll my eyes at the way Yahoo is doing things. Why put a limit on this? It seems so arbitrary.

Ah, well.