Gitmo

NPR has given lawyers representing Gitmo prisoners recorders so they can report on the conditions that the Arab prisoners are being held in. It is absolutely incredible that in a constitutional democracy 500 people can be held in such conditions where all concepts of human rights short of judicial murder can be so easilly discarded. This is an outrage. Like the virtually ignored 2000 dead American soldiers these 500 reflect on something absolutely disgusting about our current body politic. We do not care who dies or suffers for us. We have no sense of social solidarity other than ridiculous magnets on the asses of our cars.

Gitmo is an auto-immune disorder in our democracy, as is the ability to wage war without personal responsibility. When a democracy can do these things we have a chronic problem that can kill us.

Strike!

We are all on a rent strike. Our city councilman, one of the cooler and more dedicated ones, came to cheer us on and give us some backbone. Time for a change. Time for power.

I've been thinking that one of the worst things about the modern conservative movement is that it discounts social justice and solidarity for the purposes of greed. It wants to drown government in the bathtub so we all can go out and live like rich people, except if we aren't, then we live like serfs, only we work in Wal-Mart instead of in the fields. When the going gets tough the tough get rich and let the poor drown. And then they cover their shame with Jesus bullshit and crap like fear of everything that doesn't look like Dick and Jane.

Their response to terrorism has been lame, but it is also something like an auto-immune disorder where the antibodies attack the body itself. They are fundamentalists too.

So, it is time to strike, no matter how small. Time to show solidarity. Time to not be a serf.

Monday Morning

Fall is finally here. The rains are over and now the air is as crisp as a macintosh apple. Today the early morning light struck the sides of the buildings with a color of an infused port wine and fire. Now it is time for work.

I have three projects due this Wednesday. It will be close. The good news is that I got to meet Charlie Rangel, one of the politicians I really admire, and one of the pieces is on David Paterson, another person I think is cool. It is a struggle, but it is fun.

To the editing room...

Hmm.

Ruminating on some ideas. At the doctoral colloquium tonight we were focusing on literature reviews and the problem came up on what makes a novice different from an expert. I think it's about being part of a community and understanding what the community thinks is important and being able to communicate clearly around that, which makes me think about this blog I've been reading which deals with lots of issues of gender and sexuality. You aren't queer because you like to sleep with people of the same biological sex, but rather because you've constructed an identity of being queer. In the end you are still a flailing individual with lots of contradictory impulses, passions, problems, strengths and weaknesses, and that doesn't change. Loving someone isn't the thing either, and no matter what some people say who you love is pretty much something you have no real control over, so that's almost a separate issue. But the fact is that you need to construct a home for yourself, and you need a community, which is a home too. When I look back on stuff like the Eulenberg Affair and all that it seems clear you are your identity, not your impulses.

Which leads to the question of power. Kant said that we don't live in an enlightened age, but rather in an age of enlightenment. That means you are free to choose. You don't have to worry about terror. You can construct your own identity separate from coercive authority. It's way too much to ask for some kind of golden, transcendent age, but it is enough to be free and live without fear. And of course, to freely associate and make a home for yourself.

Hmm.

My Landlord

It is October 12 at about 7PM and Carl, lying on the living room floor, gets hit with a drop of water. The roof is leaking about a foot south of the ceiling fan in the living room. The ceiling is a bit deformed and it looks bad.

Sure, it's been raining cats and dogs, but the roof has been leaking forever. This is ridiculous.

I call the landlord. The person answering the phone says he will do something. I'm not exactly a believer. They've never done anything in the past, so why start now?

Hello Dalai

From His Holiness, The Dalai Lama:

"The need for simple human-to-human relationships is becoming increasingly urgent . . . Today the world is smaller and more interdependent. One nation's problems can no longer be solved by itself completely. Thus, without a sense of universal responsibility, our very survival becomes threatened. Basically, universal responsibility is feeling for other people's suffering just as we feel our own. It is the realization that even our enemy is entirely motivated by the quest for happiness. We must recognize that all beings want the same thing that we want. This is the way to achieve a true understanding, unfettered by artificial consideration."

Holy Fucking Shit

That was, with the addition of the last two words "America Attacked" the title of the special edition of the Onion on the 9/11 attacks. Well, here we go again.

The subways are on high alert due to some specific intelligence that they will be attacked by Al Queda. NYPD detectives are now in Iraq looking for clues.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I went to work on 9/11 and look what happened. This is magical thinking for sure, but I still remember looking up and asking myself where that hole came from. I still cannot wear a red tie after seeing all those suited businessmen with their ties streaming in the wind as they fell from above. It's been a terrible four years of bad breathing, weight gain, depression and anger. I cannot go through this again.

On the brighter side I cleaned up my old Moviola upright and ran some film through it. Clara wants me to take it home, but that would certainly cause some strain on the marriage to have a huge film editing maching sitting around. Be better off if I collected cellos. But then, I love Moviolas. They are hard on film, but when you edit with one it is a complete physical exercise. When I first learned to edit it was a frustrating experience, but after a decade plus editing on Avids I miss the feel of film passing through my fingers. I still have a scar on my right hand from an out of control rewind. And that trick of winding up trims on the side plate so they would be nice and tight and compact so you could put them in the white boxes and store them away. The actual three dimensional quality of the emulsion making up an image fixed on a stream of flowing plastic. Bits and bytes aren't the same. Maybe more practical, but not the same.