Human-Loving Misanthropy

The Narrative of My Day

I’m talking with Amanda about how much I like my Spanish Capstone.  I’m telling her about the great opportunities my professor is giving- oh wait, here comes Marnie who notices (something of which is the greatest of errors) that I made a verbal pause: “like.” 

Stomping her way toward the desk, she begins to cry, “Like, Uhm, Uhm, Ah, Like, Huh, Uh, Uhm, Like…”  Through a third person lense, this intrusion might be her pretentious way of starting a conversation, yet, for me, this is a personal attack.

I look at her with a air that connotes a question: “do you know how many kinds of stupid you look right now?”  Thus, I turn away and continue my story once more.

To my disfavor, Cherilynn contributes to the fire of Marnie’s uncertainty of self-worth, her deeply rooted vying for the respect of which she does not reciprocate, but merely demands.  Cherilynn remarks, “did you see that look he gave you?”

Marnie did see that look I gave her.  That look saw who she is, what she stands for, it was a look she had all intentions from to hide, but here it meets her again, and it scares her.  She explains to Cherilynn, still looking down on me, “I did see that look.”  I continue my gaze, as does she, but, once again, I turn to Amanda and tell my story.  I find myself stumbling across the words, forgetting my train of thought and, inevitably, the evil beast walks away shaking her head and says, “That is completely rude,” and once more for good luck, putting more emphasis on the initial word “completely rude.”

The End.

By Junot Diaz- Obama as a Story-Teller

It has always seemed to me that one of a President’s primary responsibilities is to be a storyteller. We all know the importance of narratives, of stories; they are part of the reasons our brains are so damn big. We need stories, we thrive on them, stories are how we shape our universe. Tolkien could have been talking about the power of stories when he described his One Ring: stories rule us, they find us, they bring us together, they bind us, and, yes, they can pull us apart as well. If a President is to have any success, if his policies are going to gain any kind of traction among the electorate, he first has to tell us a story.

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. It should necessarily be a story eight years in duration, a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.

The man has tried, of course; we’ve gotten patches of narrative around all the important issues—the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror (a.k.a. the Undiebomber)—but I’ve yet to hear anything that excites that part of my brain which loves, which craves the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale. Just this past Tuesday we saw the consequences for the President of not having a real story to draw upon. In Massachusetts, the President was faced with an insurgent Republican candidate who was telling a story that should have been familiar to the Commander-in-Chief: the story of an upstart outsider with energy and ideas, who was going to shake things up, etc. The President tried to help Martha Coakely by campaigning, but since his Administration doesn’t seem to do story he couldn’t lend her one. He could only show up as himself, and that clearly was not enough. A man cannot withstand a story, even if the man is remarkable and the story is simple. The story always wins.

(What I’ve been aware of is how much better storytellers the members of the opposition are. Tea Parties and death panels—you might hate these bursts of craziness but these are, above all else, stories, narratives. Obama has provided his supporters with what, exactly? Even the Bush administration, for all its criminal shortcomings, knew the value of a good story. Which is why, when 9/11 befell us, they rode that tragedy for all it was worth. Got a good six years out of it, too.)

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/01/one-year-storyteller-in-chief.html#ixzz0dC4UTaPv

I am Pretentious

Sometimes these things happen to us.  We wake up from our mother’s womb and all we want is milk.  That might be what people mean when they say that our tastes mature.  I sure as hell don’t drive home every breakfast lunch and dinner, but could it be that I look for the next best thing.  Jaqcues Lacan explains that a child has a preverbal union with his/her mother.  He penned the term “Desire of the Mother” which explains the unabashed longing for that two-way union between mother and child.  In other words, Lacan believed that an infant saw the world as one entity, and inside this entity were his/herself and the entity’s representative- that being the mother.  In other other words, there is nothing more intimate than the preverbal relationship between mother and child.

Lacan posed a problem, however.  What happens when this child ventures out of the preverbal phase?  As chicken little might say, the sky falls.  Everything seems to Tetris itself into its proper place and, unfortunately, it doesn’t disappear when it makes a solid, horizontal line.  Then, as we mature, we find ways to get back to that preverbal phase: according to Lacan, anything we do, especially those actions considered as “self-destructive” or considered “mature” are ways that we desire that connection with the mother.

Lately I’ve found myself becoming more and more metropolitan, decontextualized, post-modern, whatever you want to call it, I’m becoming it.  From the movies I watch to the premium television I buy; from the books I read to the discussions sparked from said books; from me buying McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, investigating other publishing companies like CrazyHorse, A Public Space, Orlo, Harper’s to the music I listen to per the suggestion of friends whom I consider to be “solid sources.”  And, most recently, my greatest step toward a metropolitan state of being is becoming a vegetarian, but not really a vegetarian, a more pretentious vegetarian: a vegetarian with specific guidelines on the preparation of his meat.

Where did this come from?  Ask Natalie Portman.  Here is what I want you to do, type in “Eating Animals Natalie Portman” into Google and then you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from.  Then you’ll understand why I ask my girlfriend’s mother where she found her meat, how much frozen water is in it, if she understands what cage-less really means and what fresh air-raised really means, whether or not we can ever know if the animal on our plates was killed in an efficient way and not tortured while its foot was stuck in its grave for the entirety of its life.

I call myself a vegetarian, though, because I don’t want to explain to people the pretentious little secrets of why I do what I do and how I do it.  I want them to accept the fact that my farts are going to smell worse and take the preconceived notion that I’m ruining my image as an American- the carnivorous American who eats meat on Thanksgiving and thanks God before a meal.

Yet, while I write this, when I look at myself taking a step forward, becoming smarter, maturing, helping my body and the environment, Lacan says I’m trying to reverse it all.  I’m trying to stop the flow of time, and, no, I’m not getting lypo, I’m not getting age-reduction and I’m not getting that thins that made John Kerry look like Howdy Doody without the freckles.  What I am doing is trying to find a way back to that perfect union between me an my mother.  It’s nothing Oedipal, at least I hope it’s not.  But it’s a natural state of being: it’s protection of our own longevity.  Why am I not eating meat- to help my health, to help the health of animals, to help the environment and, essentially, to hope that it will create this giant time machine that will take me back to the garden of Eden and be born once again.  The fact of the matter, all of my metropolitan activities won’t force me back into my mother’s womb, it won’t put me back in the garden of Eden, it won’t make me younger but, instead, it will make me older and make me pass the time faster than before from all the research I am putting into what I eat.

So, how do I get here?  Starting with breastfeeding and ending with our impending demise?  I think I just found the chronology of this whole argument.

Today

Wikipedia searching: I connected Bureaucrat with “Steampunk” all thanks to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and the bureaucracy of the central air conglomerate.