h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shane Ferguson. That's an excellent joke. Will check out that book--I seem to remember reading a book review of it, or maybe seeing it in a bookstore, and being intrigued. And I think you're dead right about the labor movement and union thing. It's true that unions often abuse their power and that many are as corrupt as any political entity, but I'll take that set of problems over the pre-unions set of problems any day. People, I think, have this unfounded belief that when the market works itself out (as it almost never does), it works out for everybody (which of course it doesn't). They also seem to think that corporations give blue-collar workers the wages they do out of a sense of decency, and not because they're being forced to. My impression is that most anti-union people are in high-demand professions that don't require them, and they don't quite understand on a practical level that not everybody's salary is determined as theirs is. But I'm preaching to the choir here.

I feel the same way about reggae and frat boys, and part of me is annoyed that this should happen because I actually like some reggae. It's all the more annoying because your average frat-boy doesn't get the gospel side of reggae; they skip the soul and head straight for the pot. It's not reggae's fault that frat boys like it, and it does happen to be good party music.

One of the reasons I'm a little defensive about reggae is because, in high school, I was enlisted to be in a reggae band. I played trombone. We played clubs in Central New York, opening for the Toasters, Mephiskapheles, Yellowman--those types of groups, either up from New York City or just going on tour. We got the gigs we did mostly because we were pretty good and, being high school students, pretty darn cheap. Who else could offer a decent quality reggae act for $150? Anyway, it was tons of fun: we were good enough to get people dancing and cheering (we were a decidedly uptempo reggae act, switching to ska and dub for some stuff), and then we got to stick around and mosh (such a dated word!) to the ska acts. Of course, seeing more than my share of ska and reggae acts gave me a healthy disrespect for many bands--it was particularly bad when we, a bunch of high school kids, were better than they were--but it made me love the music because when it was good, it was fantastic.

I recognized that the "cred" came from "street cred"--though I'm not sure that it's originally from Wired--but I think the new spin is the idea of points that can be gained or lost depending on what you do. It made me think of life as a cheesy game show, like I walk into Kim's and say, "One copy of 'Meet the Feebles' please," and then bells and whistles go off and the person behind the counter informs me that I've just gained 50 precious indie cred points. Elated, I go to a Starbucks to celebrate with a Dap-Cap-Mochaccino Colonoscopy Cinammon Suprise. Buzzers and raspberries go off and inform me that I have lost 75 indie cred points, and only attendance at a Japanese punk-pop band's show at Arlene's Grocery can save me now. Well, you get the idea.

We start playing around 9. We go until probably midnight. Should be fun.

Yes, you are preaching to the choir. While I think there are a few gigantic unions that should probably be reorganized and rid of mob influences, I don't really like the idea of trusting businesses to do the right thing. And I hate it when people mock it when cleaning services unions or such are on protest by suggesting they're doing it out of laziness or greed. I cheer them on, since it's obscene how exploited workers are in certain industries and they need all the support they can get.

Of course, I happen to work in an industry myself where unions are not really prevalent, most programmers ascribing to some sort of libertarian fantasy Ayn Rand would be proud of. Also, most programmers are not legally entitled to collect overtime. It's rather ironic though when these programmers talk about how unions are bad because they sap productivity and discourage initiative and are then horrified when they're told that they're laid off and there are not even any severance payments available or even pay for their last few weeks of work. And those 80-hour work weeks for stock options are worth nothing. Suddenly, those people who were bad-mouthing collective bargaining start to wonder, but there still hasn't been much stirring yet (except among some workers at Amazon, etc.) With unions they might have at least gotten some feedback, retraining, support, etc.

I love your game metaphor, because in some sense it's a bit what we do. Everytime I pick up a CD by some sideproject of a German musician working in Chile on a Norwegian label at Other Music, I feel my Indie Cred points rising. Of course, the big hazard is not to go into Starbuck's, but to encounter someone more obscure than you are. Unfortunately, this can happen at the places you go to become hip. So you go to rent "Meet the Feebles" and the employee at Kim's is amazed you haven't watched "Forgotten Silver" or such. Your only recourse is to abandon things the moment they become popular. As my girlfriend once joked, "The moment somebody has heard of a band you like, you stop listening to them." Yesterday, on the ride back into the city, we were listening to an indie show on WNYU, and she quipped "He's out-geeking you musically" and I probably lost 50 indie points in the process. I know, it sounds like my girlfriend makes my life miserable, but she's just a big tease.

When we were up at MassMOCA (great place) they had a show called "Game Show" which involved game-inspired art. One of the artists Sophie Calle had a collaboration with Paul Auster and did something where she followed instructions of his for several weeks documenting her progress. In another piece, she hired a detective to follow her around for a day and presented her diary of the day and his report (complete with pictures). It was rather fascinating. I wonder if you could write up a Street Cred Game.

On the ride up, we were flipping through the radio and came across a station playing a low tribal beat with an Egyptian flute melody fading in and out above it. As we drove north, random snatches of noise and speech from other stations started bleeding onto the frequency. It was the coolest thing I had heard in a long time, and I was said when we rounded a hill and lost it for good. That's just a random story I felt like sharing. Anyway, you should go to Other Music and ask for Staedtzism 2. It's a nice comp of synth dub, and it will earn you indie cred points up the wazoo (it seems there's a bonus score if Tokyo or Berlin is involved). But I can make you a tape to get extra Indie Cred points for myself. I'm hoping to get enough to redeem them for a prize at some point.

Okay, thanks for the info. I guess I'll be there around 10 or something (Gray Dog Cafe just south on the street is a nice neo-hippie place to get coffee by the way). I'll be the guy with the hair wearing clothes.

Oh, did you know the Wetlands is going to close soon? It's another victim of gentrification.

So: good to actually meet you yesterday. Having just said we should get together and hang out, you'll forgive me when I tell you that I am in fact unable to do anything else next week. Monday, Tuesday, and wednesday are occupied by music; Thursday and Friday I'm visiting my parents (they're going to be on the beach in Jersey); then Saturday there'sthis big family reunion-type thing going on that I've decided to go to. Sunday (the 19th?), actually, there's this all-day African music thing in Prospect Park that I plan to go to. It starts in the afternoon and is capped off by Baaba Maal in the evening (I think he goes on at 6:30--nice and early for a fogey like myself). Interested?

I'm trying to decide if indie cred points would apply to my current musical taste. I can't really say, because so much of what I want is located in the "world music" section of the store. David Byrne wrote a better essay than I ever could about this (appropriately titled "I Hate World Music"), but I share his dissatisfaction with the way foreign-language artists get the shaft in the US. English-language artists would never tolerate the marketing strategies--or the place in the CD store--that foreign language artists have to put with. Fela Kuti and Thomas Mapfumo should be in the funk section next to James Brown and Curtis Mayfield; instead, they're relegated to the section that also includes field recordings of Cameroonian pygmy drumming. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Cameroonian pygmy drumming--far be it from me--but it's weird to lump them together, just as it would be weird (though interesting) to have Mos Def put in the same section as field recordings of prison work songs from the 30s. Mos Def wouldn't tolerate that, though--he might even consider it offensive.

But this begs the question (do I get snobby academic points for using that phrase) of how you should divide up your music. My answer, actually, is to not divide them at all. Everything in my collection is simple alphabetical order, either by artist or by composer if it's classical. This makes for some interesting juxtapositions (Thomas Mapfumo and the Magnetic Fields; Harry Bolick, an old-time fiddler, in between Blondie ad Brahms), and I feel like I am being fair to everyone. Steph considers this an abomination, but then her CD collection (we have not combined them--yet) is easily categorized into three discreet sections: classical music, musicals, and (watch this) everything else.

Anyway. I like your story about the radio stations blending into each other--I too sometimes think that accidental blending is the coolest thing I've ever heard. The same things happen, of course, all the time: two cars playing different music go by slightly out of phase with one another, to the backbeat of some construction equipment; a man carrying a radio blasting hip-hop walks by an Indian restaurant where a sitar and tabla are going strong. These things always make me think of one of my favorite modern (well, early 20th century) composers, Charles Ives. If you haven't heard him so much (despite his Run Lola Run appearance), I'd recommend him to you. He experimented with this concept of overlapping things that don't mathc in most of the things he did. Some of them are funny and gimmicky. He did one piece for two marching bands, where they play very different things, start on opposite sides of a football field, and march toward one another, ultimately to enmesh, then separate out again. Some of them are sublime, either tinged with dread and menace, or achingly beautiful. And since going through a Charles Ives phase, it's one of those things where I now hear things that could be his music everywhere I go--the sort of accidental juxtapositions of sounds that you hear on the street, or when radio stations blend into one another. He was really onto something, I think--and the noisier the world gets, the more relevant he seems.

It was nice to meet you as well. It's always nice to give the doctors a slip and escape from the asylum where they strap me down and force me to peck out my messages with a pencil in my mouth (I can now distinguish between a Dixon and Ticonderoga by taste). Or so it would seem before we met. It's true, I could've been an 80-year old grandmother and you'd never know thanks to the anonymizing power of the Internet. Of course, I could still be an 80-year old grandmother who paid some guy on the street to go pretend to be me, but that's just a bit too paranoid, but I'm sure you're contemplating it now (thinking, did he ever do anything inconsistent?). Of course, it's no big deal, since everybody else but you are robots anyway, and the world is really just a giant computer simulation.

I don't really like World Music either as a concept. I suppose it's good to bring in some extra attention for some groups, but it tends to pigeonhole some groups into these arbitrary geographic distinctions that aren't really appropriate for our modern world where musical styles flit across the globe. Funnily enough, this week's Onion had a gag headline "Mall Music Store Files All Black Artists Under 'Urban'", which is pretty much the same thing. Of course, Other Music has the strangely infuriating logic of their own with sections like "In", "Out", "Electronica", "Krautrock". I too alphabetize my CD collection, but not really out of any philosophical consideration but rather pragmatic concerns. With 300 or so CDs, I don't want to scan the shelves repeatedly to find the disk I want to hear. I have not combined my CD collection with my girlfriend's either, but I wonder how strange it would be (we have different eclectic tastes).

Snobby Academic Points are another type of Cred system, but they can only be redeemed at universities and academic symposia or other smart and dry publications (50 bonus points if it's the New York Review of Books). In the appropriate parlance, I would say that mixing the signals is a rather Postmodern artform, because it recontextualizes the existing products into new contexts, stripping them of their distinct value as products and creating a new sound that reflects the heterogenous makeup of our modern world. In essence, the 'text' of the new sound is greater than the sum of its parts, since there is also significance to the process of mixing. Or something like that. It is postmodern though, since the art is not so much creation as selection, a concept unique to this past century of pop art, sampling, and cut-up. Sure, the selection is random (thus annihilating the role of the artist), but the artist is still responsible for the setup. In essence, the artist plans for his own removal. Wacky.

I'm not familiar with that composer, but I'll check him out. I seem to recall that Cage also had some experiments with chance, and I think the Italian Futurists may have been the granddaddies of such musical experiments. In any event, that technique became somewhat popular in the eighties among industrial groups, thanks to the works of such groups as Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten (the latter had a piece called Vanadium I Ching that involved chance dictating musical seqences). In the electronic sphere, some other groups also experimented with random radio noise (I recall Skinny Puppy had an electronic drum set keyed to random radio stations), and even the not-random-but-surprising sample has been a hallmark of certain forms of music for the last few decades.

Hey. This is going to be shorter than usual (maybe), because I'm getting ready to get on a bus to Boston. Going to visit some friends. May shorten sentences to speed process of typing. Or drop subjects. Sound like Rorschach in "Watchmen" when I do this.

If you're looking to get yourself some Charles Ives, I recommend a few pieces. The first is "The Unanswered Question," which is perhaps one of my favorite pieces of music ever. The string part for it is what appears in Run Lola Run--those high, quiet strings whenever things end badly. Sadly, Twyker did not use the meat of the piece, which is this beautiful trumpet figure that "asks the question" in a key entirely different--and jarring--from the peaceful strings. The woodwind section then "answer" the trumpet, in a different though no less jarring key. As the strings continue their backdrop, the trumpet asks the question again, over and over, and the woodwinds answer more and more vehemently--Ives said that near the end, they begin to mock the trumpet for asking the question in the first place, but to my ear, it sounds more like the woodwinds are just getting more and more frantic--an annoyance born of desperation. The part that really gets me is at the end, when the woodwinds seem to collapse in exhaustion, but the trumpet asks the question--the one that goes unanswered. It's gorgeous, and to me, very sad.

Another of my favorite pieces is another shorter one called "Central Park in the Dark," which is Ives's musical version of, well, a walk in Central Park at night. It starts with a sort of low (dissonant) background hum, but then things keep wafting in and out, building, receding, fading, butting in. You can imagine some of it is people shouting, or the pedestrian passes a party where a jazz band is playing, or there's some sort of confrontation somewhere. It's not as poignant (to me) as The Unanswered Question, but I think it's no less successful. He also has these longer pieces that are similar in concept to Central Park in the Dark, except based on New England Holidays. If you find the right CD, you can get all of these pieces on one CD for a relatively reasonable price for classical music.

Ives also has what to me is an ideal artistic life: he managed to be both a successful modern composer while never quitting his job as... if I remember right, an insurance salesman, which he was also very successful at. Successful enough, in fact, to hire orchestras and rent concert halls to perform his pieces and the pieces of other modern composers he liked. Clearly, this is a man who had his act together, convinced of his own talent, but also aware that very few people would ever put up the money to stage a concert of dissonant classical music. Quotes by him, which can be found all over the Internet, reveal him as an eccentric, extremely intelligent, and very clever man. He's awesome.

Well, I said it'd be shorter, so I'm going to have to drop the ball on a few of the other things you brought up (like the taste of pencils). So, I'll talk to you again soon, next time as an unemployed slacker.

Thanks for input. Enjoy Boston and unemployment. Don't get in trouble. Talk to you later. Have good weekend. Try to shower more than Rorschach.

Hey there. Back from Boston. Am unemployed. Have showered, but am currently sitting in underwear despite mid-afternoon time.

I have a question about the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which I plan to visit soon. Is it the sort of museum where you just go, or do you have a guide show you around? I thought it was the first, but then Steph said it was the second. Can you set the record straight?

This weekend, Steph and I visited two friends of mine, Chris (male) and Sam (female) in Boston. We went to the Harbor Islands, which was really cool first and foremost because until then I was unaware that there were islands in Boston Harbor to begin with. These islands, if you haven't been, are a really neat day trip. They're very pretty and offer really nice views of the other islands and various parts of the greater Boston area. Chris grew up in Brockton, outside of Boston, so he kept giving us the lowdown on different areas in the city. The most interesting for me, I suppose, was Hull, which Chris said his buddies and him used to call "Hell." Apparently, Hull was a Jersey Shore/Coney Island of sorts, enjoying several decades of constant summer visitors to the beach before (inevitably?) slipping into a honky-tonk era. When Chris was in high school, he said it was pretty much overrun by Camaros and IRocs (not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that) and that he and his friends would go down there for the sole purpose of drinking and making out with girls. The funny thing is, I probably would have liked the honky-tonk thing, but this is where Chris and I diverge.

Also, I've taken up a new instrument, the mbira, which is putting holes in my thumb but is a riot to play. It's also quite humbling, as precious little of my musical skills translate over to it. It's more of a percussion instrument, and is forcing me to pay more attention to it than I have had to pay to any instrument in a while. It's also the sort of instrument where, like reading a good book, you feel yourself getting smarter, feel your brain changing almost, as you play it. For me, this is because I have to develop all these new skills, but also, because the rhythms you can produce on it are totally hypnotic. I read an ethnomusicologist's account of the mbira last week, and he mentioned a few times that many mbira players who started when they were children dropped out of school because they said it took too much time away from playing the mbira. I'm starting to understand what they mean--not that I would ever drop out of school. Oh no, no, that would never happen.

Well, it's nice to see you're showered and slothful, especially since you probably got up when all the productive members of society were already at work. Now, you're just like one of those there hippies, no job, no work ethic, just sitting around all day with your fancy African instruments and probably tie-dye underwear (Simpsons ref: "Homer, boxers or briefs?" "Nope.")

Welcome back. I think it was one of the New York curmudgeons who said, "I have just returned from Boston. It's what I recommend to anybody else who's visiting there." Nah, it's not that bad, and there is a scary resemblence between Cambridge and Park Slope on some level. I've never been to Hull, but I have to been to Lynn ("the city of sin" as the song went), but it was actually quite tame. When I was at school, we would sometimes take a drive up to Revere (pronounced Reveah) for some chowder (chowdah) and there were often lots of Camaros and other trashy cars (cahs) and girls with wicked big hair. That was when we weren't going to the Eatery in Chinatown (we called it "Cafe Bladerunner" for its similar qualities). Hull sounds like it was more of that in spades. Of course, nothing was quite as creepy to me as the city of Chelsea. It wasn't that it was a sketchy area, just that for some reason, once you entered it, it was nigh impossible to figure out which road you could take back out. I don't know why, it just worked out that way every time.

Anyway, the Tenement Museum is tours only (starting from an office across the street from the tenement), but the tours are relatively frequent. And if you need to wait, you can always go and stand in front of a deli with the rest of the gang (your companeros), drinking a beer in a paper bag. It's the life. Sounds like you owe Steph a few bucks for losing the bet.

The mbira sounds and looks pretty cool. I once saw an improvised set done by DJ Spooky where he twiddled on a mbira. It was pretty hypnotic. Funnily enough, that was at a tribute concert and fundraiser for the Harry Smith Project. Lots of musicians did covers. Lou Reed was there, David Johannsen of course (he has a band called the Harry Smiths), the Garrigle Sisters, etc. The highlight of the show for me was Nick Cave doing a cover of "John the Revelator". You really felt like he could always retire and become a Southern fire-and-brimstone preacher if he needed a change. Anyway, I didn't know what it was at the time, but a search turned it up and it looks neat. But out of curiosity, where does one buy a Mbira anyway?

I found a website you might find a hoot. It's called Chowhound, and it's basically a place where people (and the organizer) keep tabs on all the best places to find ethnic eats in New York City. Being New York, this naturally involves a lot of work, since places open and close all over the place. Still, it's pretty fun to read some of his dispatches sometimes. This guy has a real love for food, and it amazes me he's not 400 pounds (what I would be). It's pretty wacky what he finds. For instance, I just discovered that the russian spa near where I work has some of the best russian food in Manhattan. And you can eat while sitting in a bathrobe. That gets it bonus points.

In my last long message, I said I could taste the difference between a Dixon and a Ticonderoga. That's a mistake since Dixon Ticonderoga is a particular pencil manufacturer. I should have said between a Dixon and a Sanford or such. I'm sure you noticed immediately, but it wasn't until I went to do a cryptic crossword that I noticed the error. Thanks for your discretion in not mentioning it.

Interesting pencil fact: Henry David Thoreau made his money in the family's pencil manufacturing business. He actually was an accomplished engineer and figured out a way to improve the quality of pencils (mixing in clay with the graphite), despite the inferior quality of New England graphite compared to British graphite at the time. Not too many people know that. I think it's pretty easy to go live in the woods, when you have a small pencil-maker's fortune and when you can go home for lunch every day and take your laundry back to Mom. Yeah, I'm a bit skeptical about the Transcendentalists sometimes, although I have been to Walden.

On a sad note, the b*****ds who own the parking lot behind my building seem to be ready to build something (perhaps another building). They have been putting up a fence around the property. Yesterday, we came home to discover the tree behind our building which has probably been there 50 years and is just on the property line was cut down. I am really upset about that. I think it's time to move soon. I was contemplating petty sabotage even, that's how irritating it is.

Bonus Transcendentalist Embarassment: Emerson was invited out to visit John Muir and went to Yosemite but stayed overnight at a hotel because his companions were afraid he would get a cold. Granted he was 68 at the time, but it was rather disappointing to Muir that Emerson went back to a hotel instead of a camping trip in the mountains. As he put it: "Emerson lingered in the rear of the train, and when he reached the top of the ridge, after all the rest of the party were over and out of sight, he turned his horse, took off his hat and waved me a last good-bye. I felt lonely, so sure had I been that Emerson of all men would be the quickest to see the mountains and sing them." Ouch.

Funny you mention the hippies with the African instruments business. I was fascinated with the mbira at first because I heard people from Zimbabwe--Thomas Mapfumo's players--playing it in Ithaca, eight years ago, but I was really, really worried that the people that play it around here would be these hippie types. Thankfully, they're not. My teacher is a serious musician (a percussionist) who even went so far as to make fun of all the hippies that play African instruments. "They're like, 'this is so pretty!' and they play slower and slower. Meanwhile, all the African players are just rocking out." I was very relieved to hear this.

Incidentally, you can buy a(n?) mbira at a shop called Tribal Soundz, on 6th Street in the East Village. There are two people responsible for the mbira being there: Irene, a Zimbabwean woman who lives here now, and Nora, a woman who is quite the mbira player herself. My teacher, Maurizio, is Nora's friend and the way he talks, it sounds like he's not quite as good as Nora (or Irene, for that matter), but my unpracticed ear so far can't really tell the difference. Tribal Soundz is a pretty cool store. They have all kinds of wacky instruments in there. From the decor of the place, they are clearly catering to the hippie set (who are probably their best customers) but the people there are surprisingly unhippie-ish. Nora, who I bought my mbira from, comes across as very, very serious in fact. She impressed upon me the social and religious significance of having an mbira and what it means to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. This was a little overwhelming ("You mean, I can't just rock?") but I much prefer it to the hippie sensibility of music in a blender.

This is a good segway into the Transcendentalists, so I'm going to take it. I blame them for giving the hippies an excuse to be flaky. The more I think about the Transcendentalists, the more it upsets me that they didn't put their money where their mouth was. It was all talk and no walk. This is particularly upsetting to me because people that actually do what Thoreau says you should do seem to get into trouble, not realizing that Thoreau survived his stay in woods by mooching off his neighbor, the friggin' freeloader. Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild pointed this out quite succinctly. If you haven't read it, Into the Wild is a nonfiction book about a guy who drops out of society and ends up dead in the Alaskan wilderness. I haven't spoiled anything if you haven't read it yet, but anyway. The guy's name is Chris McCandless, and he read a lot of stuff, but was sorta hooked on the Trans'lists. One passage he highlit from Walden was "No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the results were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted..." and so on. Krakauer captions the quote with "Passage highlighted in one of the books found with Chris McCandless's remains."

But to me, such back-to-nature hooey is almost a little offensive because it romanticizes for coddled first-worlders the wretched poverty that most of the world lives in. Lots and lots of people live in shacks in the middle of the woods, but they're not searching for Truth, they're searching for something to eat. While I was in Zambia, I came across a bunch of backpackers who talked about Africa in this "these people really know how to live; we've forgotten"; but if you talked to the Zambians, you found that they really just wanted a job, a place to live, what have you--all the things that these hippie types had never been without--unless they did it on purpose. To a Zambian, the hippie agenda of making things simpler and going back to nature would be ludicrous, insane. "Why would you give that up?" they might say, and then in the next breath, "as long as you're doing so, can you give it to me?" The Thoreau-brainwashed backpackers also expressed dismay when I talked about efforts to develop the country, saying that development would "ruin" it--as if all this crushing poverty existed for their delectation, as if the African continent almost had no right to develop, that they had to keep it real or something. I found this infuriating, and it was all I could do to yell at them: "These people are starving! A third of them at least are going to die from AIDS! They would trade places with you in an instant, don't you know that? You may think you want to trade with them, but that's because you don't know any better. And if you did trade with them, the big difference is that after a week, you'd do anything you could to trade back, and they'd do everything they could to stay in your shoes." The self-delusion, and blindness to the horrible conditions so many people were forced to live under, was appalling to me.

Well, that was disorganized and ranting enough. I promise I'm not like this all the time Maybe we should meet at a promising restaurant at Chowhound sometime. You and your folks, and me and my folks.

Talk to you later.

Well, I don't really consider DJ Spooky much of a hippie, but I suppose there is a bit of a hippie aura to a lot of the people who fetishize certain African instruments without giving them the proper respect due. It's somewhat like playing a piano slowly because you like the tone of a note. Yeah, it's pretty, but you're missing out on a lot prettier stuff.

Yeah, I always found Thoreau and Emerson to be tremendously overrated (if you hadn't already guessed). John Muir I can respect somewhat for praising a life in nature and actually living a life in nature, but the other Transcendentalists seem to be content talking the talk without walking the walk. And I think you're probably correct in blaming hippie flakiness on them and perhaps also the Romantic poets. Oh, I think Rosseau probably gets something there too. While I'm not willing to contend that the life of man in a state closer to nature is "nasty, brutish, and short" as Hobbes says (I think), the notion of it being idyllic and serene taken by the Transcendentalists also seems absurd.

Unfortunately, a lot of the flaky ones seem to confuse poverty with simplicity. As you rightly say, it's one thing to live in a shack because you choose to, it's another matter when you have no choice. And it's frankly appalling that people would want to force that on others to satisfy their own aesthetic feelings of a proper life. And that's why I'm a bit mixed on the whole WTO thing. On the one hand, I think the WTO has some major problems, but I also don't really agree with the motives of some of the protestors either. You need to provide development to these countries if you want to improve the living conditions, and I think the WTO and IMF are probably in one of the best positions to do that.

Suck magazine's filler had a few good pieces mocking this attitude of the flaky ones. I might put the link in off my space. Of course, the best satire I can think of offhand is the Dead Kennedys' song "Holiday In Cambodia", where you learn the downside of wanting to be sometimes in an underdeveloped country: "now you can go where the people are one/now you can go where they get things done". Even Bill Gates (a man I normally loathe) had something smart to say when he blasted Internet efforts for Africa by saying that there really was no point to wiring up the continent if half the people don't have clean drinking water. Otherwise, you're not really developing the countries, you're just putting in an infrastructure that will only be used by tourists. Or something similar.

I don't consider DJ Spooky a hippie either--and I suspect that if he picked up an mbira, he probably also figured out how to play it properly before screwing with it. And lots of mbira players are updating the traditional music also--as they should. I don't even mind using the mbira just for the sound that it makes, as long as its done in the knowledge that you're selling the instrument short a bit.

As usual, I agree with you re: the WTO, IMF, World Bank, development, etc., although my skepticism toward these organizations cannot be overstated. We seem to be very similar in our political views. I find myself agreeing with the lefties more often than not, but I can't get into the flaky 1960s aspect of liberalism. Someone asked me at one point if I thought I would have been a hippie in the 1960s, and I decided I wouldn't have been. I think, unfortunately, I probably would have been one of those white guys who got involved in the civil rights movement, which probably means I'd be one of those guys in Time magazine with horn-rim glasses and a collared short-sleeve shirt getting tapioca pudding poured over his head by some bigot while taking part in a sit-in at an Alabama diner counter.

Funny that you should go back to DK for political commentary. I bet that not a month goes by where I don't think of their remake of "I Fought the Law" when I see news items (most recently the whole Condit thing): "The law don't mean s**t if you've got the right friends/That's how this country's run..." Those 80s punk/hardcore guys really had their act together.

Well, I'll be absent again for a few days, as I'm headed down to the Jersey shore to visit my parents. No, I'm from upstate New York, but my parents are staying down there for the week, so me and my sister are going down there to visit. I'm looking forward to spending some quality time just sitting on the beach, reading, and swimming in the ocean, as it should be everyone's God-given right to do. Then I might be headed up to Vermont for a few days to play lots and lots of tunes, but we'll see if anything comes of that. Question: next weekend--the 24th-ish--if you and yours are in town, you want to get together?

Yeah, I am rather skeptical towards those organizations too. I want development and improved living standards, but I don't want it to be at the expense of rain forests, or situations like Exxon in Nigeria or such. And all the money in the world can't help if the local governments are corrupt. It's a giant complex morass (as I'm sure you're quite familiar with), but I'm just saying I hate the severe reductivism practiced by the radicals on both sides ("Capitalism perfect. You must be a commie!" "Everybody should live in a crude shack!", etc.)

I too think I would also be one of the tapioca-covered dorks, but it's nothing to be ashamed of. Have fun on your trips.

Well, I just went and got myself the Ghost World soundtrack, featuring the highlights of the film (that Indian number and the old Blues 78s) and the lowlights ("Graduation Rap" written by Clowes and the Blueshammer song written by Zwigoff), plus about 6 bonus 78s thrown on there at the end. Very cool. Although I'm a bit bemused that I've seen the movie, bought the comic, and am listening to the soundtrack. This is the kind of convergence the major studios have been fantasizing about since the Batman Movie (the pioneer of combined marketing). And it's for a small Indie film.

Otherwise, I hope life is treating you well, although I suppose you've been travelling so much you don't know quite where you are. If it's Tuesday, it must be New Jersey, or something.

Hey there. Back from Vermont.

Yeah, I bought the Ghost World comic too, and have been eyeing the soundtrack. And you're right--major studios would kill to make that happen to any of their movies. Of course, the thing with this movie is that all of the products associated with it happen to me very unusual. And how cool is it that Zwigoff put all these extra songs on the soundtrack just because he thought they were cool? That's the way it's supposed to be--more for your money, not less.

Actually, a friend of mine sat me down in front of one of Zwigoff's earlier (i.e. pre-Crumb) documentaries called "Louie Bluey" about a blues fiddler and mandolin player who goes by just that name. It's a great documentary. It has some really nice performances on it (of just people sitting around no less) and Louie himself is quite a character. He has so many awesome expressions that you immediately want to make all of them part of your own vocabulary, except that they come so fast and furious that you forget all of them. I'm not sure where you get your hands on such a thing, but there must be some place.

Vermont was pretty great. I'd spent a good part of my life in southern Vermont, but I'd never been to the Northeast Kingdom, which is basically the northeast corner of the state. It's great up there. Really beautiful and markedly more northern. Lots of conifers, nippy at night, towns that close down very early and some days don't really open up. We--Nathaniel, Nathaniel's girlfriend, and I--went up there to play tunes with some people Nathaniel knew. We stayed with a guy who lives in a log cabin. The cabin has electricity, a phone line, and running water to the kitchen. It also has a composting toilet. To pee, you just go in the woods. There was a bathtub upstairs, but I have no idea if water ran to it, or if you just had to boil a lot of water on the wood stove before settling in there. I suspect the latter. These guys, however, were ultra modern compared to the guy who lived in a teepee. He has a wood stove sitting in the middle of it, and his things are arranged in a ring around it on wooden pallets. Of course, there are plenty of houses in the Northeast Kingdom with all the late 20th-century amenties a guy could want, but that's not what our friends had. For me, it was interesting to live for three days as I'm sure many people lived not so long ago. It was amazing how quickly I abandoned the idea of showering--though actually, I've found that not showering in the country is somehow much more pleasant than not showering in the city. In the city, if I don't shower, I feel grimy and sluggish and am hyper-aware of my odor. In the country, and especially camping, I can go close to a week without showering and not feel particularly grungy or smelly (though obviously both are in fact the case)--and there's the added bonus of being able to style your hair in all kinds of new wave ways thanks to the accumulated grease buildup.

But back to the topic at hand. I really like Vermont--indeed, any sort of countryside. In fact, upon graduating college, part of me wanted to just hunker down in southern Vermont. I almost took a part-time job writing at a local paper, and was ready to take another part-time job doing whatever to pad out my income and make sure I could eat. Like the decision to go to college, it's one of the points in my life where there was a clear decision one way or the other--to southern Vermont or to Japan (I chose the latter). Every time I go up to Vermont, which is fairly often, I think about that decision and wonder just how differently things would have turned out. As it is, though, Vermont and places like it are always in the back of my mind--the place I may go to if I ever get a job that isn't dependent on a location, or an office--though I have no idea what that job might be.

The only downside of the soundtrack is that it includes the cringeworthy Blueshammer "authentic" blues song right in the middle of the beginning at track 6. This leads to a bit of a shock after you've been lulled into a trance by "Devil Got My Woman" and such. But the additional tracks are also nice at the end, especially since some of them are rather good (I keep getting "Bye bye baby" in my head). Now I'm going to get all these songs in my head, but I loaned the CD to my girlfriend, so it's going to just bother me all day.

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed yourself in Vermont. Personally, I don't think I could do without showering by choice for a week even in the wilderness. It's a bit more enjoyable to be sure, because of less pollutants, but I'd be very greasy and disgusting pretty quickly. I'm not sure how well I would be in a truly rural setting. I partially imagine the final effect to be much like the settlers in Jarmusch's "Dead Man". Pretty soon I'd have a stringy beard and Iggy Pop in a dress reading Bible passages to me. But I just suppose it's the trendy hipster urbanite in me (I've been in cities all my life). It is nice to get away though.

I like Vermont too, although I've only been there once. It is some rather pretty country though. I've been caving and canoeing in New Hampshire (not on the same trip mind you), and I imagine northern Vermont to be similar. There's something that harks back to the early days of settlement by the Europeans, and you'd be hard pressed to guess you're in one of the more densely populated regions of the country. Here's a fun bit of trivia for you: Vermont was claimed as part of New York originally during independence. They petitioned in 1776 to be a separate state, but that was refused by New York in the continental congress. In 1777, Vermonters declared themselves independent from New York and fixed borders and framed a constitution even. In 1781, an act of congress forced Vermont to cancel its claims of independence, but continued resistance (especially by the Green Mountain Men led by future furniture trademark Ethan Allen) finally led to a compromise and Statehood in 1789. In a somewhat similar fashion, Maine was originally part of the colony of Massachusetts.

Another bit of historical trivia: I seem to recall hearing I have an ancestor from Massachusetts or New York or Vermont who was one of the early casualties of the French Indian War. Everybody had been evacuated into a fort because of the threat of attack, but he decided to leave because he wanted to fetch the cheese wheel he had left at home. Apparently, he had hidden from some Native Americans but had been revealed by his dog and killed. Of course, I'm not sure how accurate the story is, since who would be a witness to relate it, but in any event, I've learned that I should just leave the cheese wheels behind. This same family also claims to have ties back to both Harold and William the Conqueror, which means I wouldn't know who to root for at the Battle of Hastings. Also, if it's true that I'm related to two rulers of England that were executed by hot pokers in a bad place. I hope to have inherited a better fate myself.

While you were away, New York was pretty much the same, although the weather was more dramatic and rainy. A few days back I came down from the apartment to see a man in a chicken suit being filmed as part of a film school project, someone who looked like a prostitute getting propositioned, and a cat with 6 toes at a bodega. It's surreal sometimes. And they're digging a giant pit behind my building. Brooklyn is calling.

Tonight, it's off to see a free performance by the Reverend Billy in Central Park. He's the guy who charges in the Times Square Disney store shouting against consumerism. It should be fun.

I've never seen Reverend Billy live, but I have seen him on TV, and read several articles about him. He seems like my kind of guy. How was he?

Vermont's early claim to independence (and I'm pretty sure it's the Green Mountain Boys, not Men) still casts a powerful spell over the state, actually, as Vermonters are a generally self-sufficient bunch. They seem like the Minnesotans of the Northeast. The cool thing about Vermont politics, actually, is how the desire to be left alone unites the more conservative Vermonters and the hippies who have transplanted themselves there. Both are small government-type people, and both pretty much want to keep things the way they are, though for drastically different reasons. Both are even very much into conservation and are relatively progressive regarding energy use. Even your most staunchly conservative down-home type in Vermont applauds the protection of lands from development, as he applauds the use of solar power. Likewise, your hippiest of hippies finds himself in awe of the ability of Vermont carpenters to build houses without nails and compost all the waste that they create for use as fertilizer in their own fields. Given this sort of political climate, it is easy to see why Congress's two independent members are both from Vermont--and why one of them (Bernie Sanders) is an out-and-out socialist, while the other (Jeffords) is quite moderate. Both officials have been Vermont's representatives for a long time, and both have maintained their popularity by actually doing what representatives should be doing: representing the will of their constituency as best they can. In fact, while I was there, I noticed quite a few "Thanks Jim!" bumper stickers on all kinds of vehicles--showing the widespread approval that Jefford's defection from the Republican party received, from liberals and conservatives alike (though a few more staunch Republicans do feel as if Jeffords betrayed them).

Great story about cheese wheels. Reminds me a little of Mason & Dixon, by my idol. My own family history doesn't really go all that far back, but the Irish side has its share of colorful characters. The one that's funniest in writing is my great-great-uncle, who around the turn of the century was a mason and contractor dividing his time between Albany and New York City. Over time, this man became a bigamist, marrying a woman and supporting a family in each city. Story goes that this went on for years and years, with neither family knowing of the other's existence--until, of course, my great-great-uncle died. At that point, the two families converged on the funeral--each still not knowing of the other. One can only imagine the fight that took place there, especially since my great-great-uncle had not accounted for his dual life in his will.

Which English rulers were killed with a hot poker up the wazoo? What a terrible way to go.

We didn't actually wind up seeing the good Reverend, since it was outdoors in Central Park and it was raining rather hard at times. Also, both of us were feeling a bit shocked by something I can't say here (privacy not obscenity is the reason why).

Interesting points about Vermont. It's true that it's always a bit of a shocking contrast to take a Republican from the Northeast and compare him side-to-side with a Republican from the Sun Belt (likewise for Texas Democrats), and regional concerns often trump national platforms (as they should). I remember Massachusetts Republican Governor Weld boosting the Grateful Dead and such (although he was a bit too right for left-leaning Cambridge). But back to the Vermont Congressmen. Good for them. Their broad concerns for their constituents is contrasted by the recent retirement announced by Jesse Helms, a man who is more and more not a representative of his constituents in North Carolina it seems (his wins have been rather narrow always) and the perfect example of a Senator representing the national interests of his party over those of a state that has changed widely during his tenure.

In response to your story, I can only think of the Groucho Marx joking about bigamy in "Duck Soup" (great movie). In response to your question, Edward II was killed with a hot poker up the wazoo. This was not only a symbolic punishment for homosexuality, it had the benefit of not leaving any external marks, thus perhaps making it seem he died naturally. Of course, we all know about it, so I guess that didn't work. I also thought Aethelred the Unready had been killed the same way, but I can't find anything to confirm that, so I guess not.

Æthelred II had his own brother killed at the instigation of his mother Ælfthryth so he could rise to throne: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A526187 I'm just sad we don't have names like that anymore.

Hey. The only reason we don't have names like that any more is because nobody will name their kids things like that any more. But you can change this, young Jacob. If you decide to spawn, you can bring an Aethelred, or a Bartholomew, or a Cadmus into our screaming world. But pray for him when he gets on the playground.

So, I'm writing mostly to say that Steph and I went to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at long last. Fantastic. The raw information about the tenement itself (incredible that they found out so much about the tenants!) was augmented by the dark, wry sense of humor held by our tour guide, Bob Murphy, who used many of the facts about tenements to talk about today's current housing crisis for the poor. Pretty great. There was something beautiful and life-affirming, too, at realizing that for all that grinding poverty, for all the disease and depravity those people experiences, so many of them got out, survived, improved their lot. It's the kind of story you can't quite make up, you know?

Also, before we went to the museum, Steph and I stopped at a place called Fried Dumpling (it was written up in Time Out) nearly on Allen St. We had us a lunch and two coconut drinks for four dollars total. That's what I call a meal.

Today was my first day of graduate school. This week is occupied entirely by orientation and other such things. We are told to ease ourselves into the process of graduate school, as we learn just how much work it is going to be, and simultaneously egged on to get ourselves as involved in the things around us as possible. It's kind of neat being back in school--and totally different from undergrad. It makes a difference that everyone is older, and also that everyone has, in the grand scheme of things, such similar interests. It makes people very easy to talk to--though it appears that, as in undergraduate life, there are still a portion of people who seem to be there so they can increase their chances of making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!! Still, I am impressed. Should be an interesting, poverty-stricken two years.

Hope that shocking private thing worked out all right, or is working out...

Ah yes, I could tell that school was in session by the influx of bright new happy faces around town. I live near NYU and you know it's a new term when suddenly everybody seems younger and dressing like Britney. I was in Harlem on Sunday before we walked with a friend to a Southern restaurant on 110th, and I saw some of the Columbia kids are back in town (they move in packs and you can just tell). I hope you're not feeling too overwhelmed by the whole grad school thing and enjoying it (it can be fun).

We have a friend who was talking about names for children. She thought Sebastien and Lucien would be great names, but we just thought that kid would have to run a lot on the playground. Personally, I think naming the kid Loser is a great idea, so when they tease him, they'd just be calling his name. I should mention that nobody I know is pregnant, so this is just a random discussion, not a urgent need. I have noticed a disproportionate number of pregnant women on the street lately though. Almost all are white women in their mid to late 30s. I think we're in another mini baby boom.

I must just state I have seen it all. I was in Williamsburg on Saturday and was walking around the too too trendy shops staffed by too too trendy people when I saw out of the corner of my eye something that shocked me. That's right, in the shop was an Enid action figure, a cartoonish Playmobil-like figure supposed to represent Enid when she was just a little scrapper (before the age of the movie). So I guess there are action figures too for Ghost World. I am amazed. Williamsburg is a bit annoying, but they have some decent thrift shops on the ends and a nice Thai place, plus a glassblowing studio, so it's not all bad.

Here's a question for you: are you secretly a writer for the New Yorker? In recent weeks, they have published stories on PJ Harvey, Chowhounds as well as fiction from Haruki Murakami and WG Sebald, two authors I esteem. Always, it's just after I have been talking about it here or elsewhere. So, either I'm a bit of an obscure trendsetter (thankfully, the New Yorker seems to be less trendy these days) or you're secretly stalking me. To take advantage of a poor defenseless man strapped to a bed forced to peck out messages with his teeth is really unfair.