Demos: No, ALL!

This is in response to a column that gave me the impression that the author said that political engagement didn't matter. I disagreed. Some important changes were made, but not to the original thesis. Perhaps the new version is a smidge faster, and maybe hit the proverbial notes more accurately. I don't think anything is lost in the translation, though. In fact, I like the printed version a little better.

I am not too proud to admit that part of this was inspired by Beth, with whom I disagree on a couple issues relating to Obama. Since much of the internet is about pointless feuds, I'd like to note that this doesn't mean I hate her, but simply disagree with her on a fairly important social issue that (hopefully) affects both of us.

Oh, and if you understand why, specifically, the non sequitur title is there, (and not simply as a reference to a praticular band) you win three hundred internet points.

My peers ask why vote and why bother with civic engagement, and it's a good question. Why bother with civic engagement at all when for the last couple decades, youth turnout has been at all time low (recently that has been changing) and voter apathy (why bother with presidents when the differences between candidates are shallow and they're all sponsored by special interests that profit on the status quo…) is fairly high?

I wish I had something better, something that sounded more academic or something that sounded more debonair, but here it is. Why should you bother? Because you've seen what happens when people didn't care. W. If you're enrolled here and fairly liberal, then you know what it's like during your formative years to be shut out of the political process, attacked and called a traitor to your country, all for voicing your opinion. To stave off the inevitable: I make no statements for when Clinton was in office, since I wasn't old enough to render a complex enough judgment for this column.

As for the idea of "keeping your political ideas to yourself", I'd like to respond with "Well, that actually ties into why bother with civic engagement." Let me speak, as I often do, about videogames. As I have previously mentioned, the "debate" on videogames is couched in a framework of "They're the worst things to happen to kids since rap music, don't you agree? You don't? Well, you're wrong, and destroying the innocence of American youth." Why is this? Because this side is the only one speaking up and voting for "the issue". And yes, it also has something to do with the fact that they donate lavishly to the reelection campaigns of Congresspeople. For the most part, there has not been until incredibly recently a coordinated attempt to form another perspective on videogames in the media. Opponents of videogames speak up, so they have the floor, and set the tone of the discussion. To appropriate a Modern Life is War lyric, if no one is speaking to you, speak up.

So, if you want to change the discussion (whether it's videogames or something else entirely), you're going to have to get your metaphorical hands dirty. You're going to have to speak in public about how you feel and you're going to have to take the plunge of expressing yourself about something publicly, or you can keep silently writhing and hope that magically, things will change.

I'm trying to say this without a bunch of rah-rah-rah garbage but, if you want change, you're going to have to raise your voice. I don't want this to end like a Disney teen drama, so I'll leave it like this: We have a mounting national debt (both foreign and domestic), a housing crisis that is squeezing people out of their homes, a war that will cost us over $2 trillion all told, and an international image in tatters.

You're still asking why you should care?

Qrazy Quotes for Hedonism Week! Enjoy too much information!

Hello, gentle readers!
I present before you a special event, a near transcript of the meeting between everyone but Jack, with all the boring parts cut out. The topic? Hedonism theme week. OooOOoOOooh. The boring parts have all been cut out, so it's only about one tenth as painful as the real thing was. Enjoy!


James: Anyway, what's up?
Thomas: Not much. Hating. Patrolling. Trying to catch people riding dirty.
James: It's good to know you haven't forgotten the streets.
Thomas: I hate them so.

Thomas: ...okay, Cathleen's going to go have sex.
Thomas: So she's probably not coming to the meeting of our blog.
James: ...
Zachary: Good for Cathleen.
Thomas: I know, right?

Zachary: Eleven Names is about being interesting and writing things.
Thomas: In the least intellectually dishonest way.
Thomas: With a rake.
Zachary: Maybe.

Zachary: And it is hard to have a group identity when we don't post enough. But, I don't like low volume of posts as a justification for making decisions we'll have to live with for a long period of time.
James: THEN POST MORE.
Thomas: ...said the kettle.

Beth: We had standards?
Beth: ...why?

Zachary: Yeah, I hate that.
Thomas: You hate my voice inflection boots?

Thomas: Anyone have a post in the pipe?
Zachary: Yup!
Zachary: By which I mean no.
Thomas: Ah good.

Thomas: It is hard to feel the hedonism in February.
Thomas: OH LOOK I'M SICK AND IT'S FUCKING COLD OUT THERE *UNF UNF UNF*

Zachary: So, Cathleen is back.
Thomas: How long was that?
Zachary: 40 minutes?

Thomas: Someone with a rigid and potent chat invite, please use it on Cathleen.
Zachary: Apparently there is no chat invite rigid or potent enough.

James: That's why I'm grumpy, I didn't have my happy lamp on.
Zachary: ...
Zachary: SO SAD
Thomas: *UNF UNF UNF UNF*

Cathleen: hedonism
James: Yes.
James: We are for it

James: That pointless homosexual teasing.
Thomas: We are more than friends, but less than lovers! OUR LOVE HAS NO NAME!
Cathleen: You could call it Jake!
Cathleen: Jake is a nice name.

Cathleen: I am stressed now!
Cathleen: I will fucking end you all!

Cathleen: and what happened to James?
Thomas: Dead.
Zachary: Buried.
Thomas: Happy lamp overloaded, burnt the flesh from his bones.
Zachary: It's true.
Zachary: I heard the sizzle.
Cathleen: I love my happy lamp.
James: Sigh.
Cathleen: There he is!
Thomas: FUCKING ZOMBIEA AGHAGHAGHH
Thomas: ...
Thomas: *UNFBRAIN UNFBRAIN UNFBRAIN*

Thomas: College sucks! Everything sucks!
Thomas: *runs upstairs, shuts door, plays loud fall out boy*
James: Sigh.
James: I think I know that song, too.

Cathleen: YES!
Cathleen: no . . .
Thomas: STOP MESSING WITH ME WOMAN

Beth: .....
Beth: I've fucked for seven straight hours.
Beth: While (edited - Zach: TAKE THAT OUT Thomas: D:<)
Thomas: Notes for next time: Have someone feeding you grapes.

Thomas: Old people can have sexytime too!
Zachary: ...yeah, they can.
Thomas: But that does not mean I want to watch that, Internet.

Zachary: Philosphy of Athens (seize the new) versus Sparta (appreciate what you have).
Thomas: Spoiler: Athens wins.

Cathleen: so are there anymore "staff" related issues we need to work out?
Zachary: No. I don't think there really were originally.
Zachary: But I'm glad we talked about things.
Thomas: Blamed: James.
Zachary: Indeed!
Cathleen: Seconded.
Cathleen: Now.
Zachary: Now?
James: ?
Beth: Yes!
Thomas: GET HIM!
Zachary: RAAAA

The giant clown gloves on my hands are merely proof of my devotion.

Hello, gentle readers.

I realize that the staple rule of all internet interaction is not to feed the troll, but sometimes something so incalculably brilliant appears that you simply have to toss the slavering beast a few scraps. Behold Hitch Bitch. Perhaps the most erudite 15-year-old nihilist on the entire staff of Vanity Fair (take that, Kendrick Darkrayven) will even get his comeuppance. If reading the New Yorker has taught me anything, and it hasn't, it's that college professors often have nothing better to do other than think up zingers in response to the things that they read.

Because they are nerds, Lebowski.

Anyway, I apologize for my absence (I'm certain you were tres desolee) but I had stuff to do. Like go west of the Allegheny River, to Columbus, Oheeyo. It is a strange land, full of bars and sex shops and then more bars and then more sex shops and then! Aldi's! LET'S RENT SOME DAMN SHOPPING CARTS! The entire state seems to be riddled with Arby's and Cracker Barrels, too, so if you've got a hankering for biscuits or roast beef, allow me to merely point the way middle-west. Though if Ohio is the mid-west, does that make Pennsylvania the mid-east? Or are the mid-Atlantic states simply content to exist as they are (Mid-Atlanticism), proudly being neither southern nor western? Oh H E double hockeysticks, we already passed up that theme week, didn't we?

One of the greatest vices I indulge in is political bickering. For the record, I don't especially hate any candidate this year - I've spent the adultier-third of my lifespan in open protestation to our president and his baby-eating party, so you can understand if I am somewhat bewildered with McCain, and how I agree with some of his policies. We are presented with a candidate that is not a raging douchebag from the Republicans. Likewise, spend-o-crat side, we have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who both deviate from the Old Evil White Male stereotype significantly. What is going on, America? Like season 4 of Project Runway, there is no clear-cut villain. Which is partially why things are interesting to me. Like, I am happy no matter what happens.

So I suppose I can only really support whichever candidate proposes catapult the aforementioned Christopher Hitchens into the sea, perhaps to be followed by Tom Delillo or the Bizarro version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who I imagine is actually George Bush Jr.). I mean, since Ron Paul basically slid away with his tail between his legs, and since Mike Fucking Gravel has evaporated like the ethereal being he ran as, we have very few (openly) madmen with which to entrust the title of Chief Executive. Logically, we must then make them mad.

Their public nature will be the first stepping stone. They want our vote? They must do little things at first - provide sound bites, pose with the elderly or the frowny or the ugly. Barack Obama must perform a handstand to prove his presidential character, and Hillary Clinton must eat ten banana pies. McCain must enter the Chute of Shoes, and find ten matching pairs within five minutes. Little fokesy things! To prove how connected they are with the people. Soon things are stepped up a notch. Perhaps someone boxes a kangaroo, or even wanders through a maze of mirrors with several body doubles and wax duplicates. Eventually, they will wear clothing made of grape jell-o and write backwards, or perhaps unicycle on elephants. Really, it could be anything, because what I'm proposing here is not just delightful whimsy. I will vote for any candidate who wants my vote so badly that they sacrifice their dignity and sanity.

Is it a lot to ask for? Certainly. But this is hedonism week (for like, negative two days now?) and I am feeling haughty. And I tire of candidates who are willing to talk and debate and blah blah blah. Give us a show. America is the next Roman Empire, so why bother pretending that it isn't? Our decadence could burn so bright that it casts a shadow for centuries to come, instead of just burning guiltily behind closed doors.

BONUS CONTENT:
You may have been aware of your own suffering enough last Friday to notice a lack of Krazy Kwotes. I have heard benediction, and relief comes swiftly.

On hedonism.

Hedonism is an intelligence of the flesh. It is the active choice to make, of an indifferent and ugly world, a better one. Bite into the correct fruit, something spotless, pulpy, and wet, and you've not only gained admittance to the garden, but created it.

Why rely upon vulgar biology and accidents of time and space when we can make choices? We can invoke our best selves. We can wrap ourselves in strange glamours and furs, in suits with silken and luxurious linings never to be seen save by ourselves and a few lovers¹. We can inform the universe of what we are, rather than accepting the things we are told to want and be.

The current incarnation of the world, this thoughtless and slovenly beast that feeds on waste and plastics, is, indeed, disappointing. Materialism, we're told, is nothing but the cheap, the new, the replaceable. It is to be consumed without question at the same time that it is to be distrusted. That distrust is not revolutionary, but built into the creature itself. It is expected that we should resent without either fighting or ignoring the corporate gods we are told we cannot escape. In our discomfort with the physical we rape the planet because, for all our desires, we do not respect the things themselves. The objects will, they must, be replaced by something newer, so they may rot, and the earth and the materials and the people that made them, being also things, may rot with them. The segment of the world from which I hail, as noted by Mister Thomas à Becket, does have too much, and we certainly have more than we've earned. My nation is fast becoming a landfill because we feel that we need, that we are entitled to, things that we do not enjoy. However, the material of materialism, I might suggest, is not the problem.

Decadence is a delicate and wounded thing. I do not fear objects. I do distrust the ugly, and the inhumane. So I avoid it, and instead cling to the rare, the antique, the strange, and the beautiful. May I request that you join me?

Hedonism, I posit, requires more than excess. It also relies upon a strong sense of discernment. One wouldn't wallow in just anything. Drunkenness is little more than a vice without knowledge of what we drink. Our ability to afford fine wines and ancient liquors is irrelevant: what matters is that we perfect our own preferences. Knowledge of the textures, the colours, the flavours, the scope of possibility, makes selection a sacrament. Therein lies the indulgence.

¹_{Yes, I am in fact implying that Lord Whimsy's lovers include every one of us to read his blogue. He's a gentle, intelligent, and dashing man. We cannot be expected to restrain ourselves.}

A Brief Defense of Hedonism

I am a hedonist, and proud of it.

I do nothing except search after new experiences, facts, situations and puzzles in the hope that I will derive some enjoyment from having found them. My mind is ever-hungry, and the rest of my life is structured around feeding it. Everything else is less important, the body a not-always-so-distant second. The world exists, and I yearn to know it with an intense and bottomless hunger.

I'm no good at owning and caring for material goods. I don't keep my room in order or my clothing clean. I have a lot of trouble paying attention to things that don't interest me. But when I'm on my game, when my mind is sharp and my talons are out, when I can taste what I'm looking for in my brain, that's when I know I'm alive.

There is so much that I don't understand, so much that I have not seen, and I want to know it all. And there isn't time to do anything else but seek it out. If pleasure is the motivating factor in my continually deepening understanding of the world, then so be it.

I try to be the best person I can, because I find it hinders my ability to enjoy myself when I do not.

I don't understand people who don't set out, as best they can each day, to enjoy the world. Sure, it's a terrible place full of terrible people who want to do terrible things to one another. Sure, it can be pain and suffering and despair. Sure, we're a set of evolved neuroses competing for processor time and nutrients in a fleshy sack laced with poisons and a million different kinds of tiny battling monsters.

But it still beats nothing.

The rain on your face when you look up at the storm beats nirvana hollow any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned. Heaven, as the Talking Heads say, is a place where nothing ever happens. This world may not be the best of all possibilities, but it's the one we have, and it is fascinating, fragile, beautiful and terrible in equal parts.

In the face of such an existence, hedonism is the only logical way to proceed. Enjoy the world you live in, take hold of it, and make it an even more unbearably beautiful place.

I can't think of a better alternative.

Obama! Spring Break! Whoo!

I really like Obama. Honestly and deeply like him. I like hearing him speak. I like his story, his policies, his platitudes. I like him in a way that is counter to my cynicism, that is objectively, very foolish. And I am not naive, I know that he is an American politician, which is to be a huckster and a liar and a snake-oil salesman. But in Obama, I am okay with the deceptions and compromises. I can live with them, because he is at the very least self-aware. He knows who's going to vote for him and he knows what they want to hear and how to say it, how to perform and present himself to them as the vehicle for their frustrated optimism and vestigial idealism. Unequivocally, the "youth vote" (as it were) is his major strength, the true devotees and zealous converts. The Baby Boomers and the Union Workers and the Frustrated Republicans are being swayed, seduced and shown the light, but slowly and with the passionate guidance of these college students. Anyone over the age of 17 and under the age of 30 is chomping at the bit to vote for the Obamanator. We're ready to go. Get us to a booth, and we know what to do.

Unfortunately, the most common criticism is also the fairest observation: Obama really doesn't have much to say. Not yet, anyway. He has some outlines. Some ideas. A clear and (to me) fairly comforting voting record. But Hilary's had her marching plan ready since the impeachment days. That is irrelevant, and I feel that he (or at least, his incredibly clever staff) understands that. That the youth vote would not be won with a PowerPoint presentation and a pragmatic attitude. For better or worse, this (perhaps more than any) is to be a race won by image.

This is fairly abhorrent, and I apologise for my fellow 20-somethings. But hear us out: We've got a lot on our minds. We've grown in dark times, many of us only just remember the milk and honey days of Clinton's presidency, and the rest suffer the pain of fallout. And yes, compared to these latter days of the Shrub, I do think Clinton's time in office has a comparative sylvan quality. That's neither here nor there, though. We've seen tragedy and bloodshed at an astonishing rate, defended by bloodless and cowardly people. We've seen photographic evidence of government-sanctioned torture. We're in a post-Nixon America. We were born suspicious and we were born cynical. We never had ideals to compromise. Remember, the last election. How many of you out there loved making the distinction: "I am voting against Bush, not for Kerry". C'mon, let's see those hands. I confess.

But Obama. He stands up so tall and speaks to clearly. He's so...well, he's so fucking presidential. I can understand why America misses Camelot still. It's not an accident that several members of JFK's family, including his daughter, have passed the torch to the present candidate. Obama is the president in an action film. He is a pretty picture, and please forgive us for being shallow. But that's all we need from our candidate. We're sick of reality, and Obama has promised we'll never see it. We've seen too much embarrassing human-ness in our leaders: aggressive idiocy of Bush2 and the sleaze of Clinton. Obama promises with each step of his campaign that he'll keep his skeletons, his perversions and his spelling mistakes out of the evening news. He'll never cry or freak out at a primary. No blue dresses. Don't worry kids, Obama's here and he's got it taken care of.

That's just what we wanted to hear.

Theme Week: Hedonism.

You're right.

This is a loaded theme week. Loaded in the sense of there are quite a few negative connotations with the word we're basing our writings on, and also in the sense of illicit substances, liquids and corporeal objects.

Devotion to pleasure as a way of life is what the Random House Dictionary of the English Language calls hedonism, though the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (roughly 1070 pages, and yes, you can bludgeon someone to death with it...) defines it quickly as the pleasure as the good and I can't really disagree. (After all, they did write the books.) I always got the idea that there was a connotation of opulence in the use of the word hedonism, so with that said, I shall continue.

Behind the scenes, there is a little mantra we have, and that is reveal as much about yourself as you please, but do allow other people to reveal themselves as they please. So, we'll have to eschew a little bit of background. I hope you don't mind.

I am not terribly hedonistic in the current (and perhaps classical?) sense. I have only recently started imbibing alcohol, I still haven't used other forms of recreational mind altering substances (recorded media aside) and my sexual palate is rather limited in both scope and variety.

Despite this, I get the idea that I can speak about hedonism fairly frankly and (perhaps!) with a bit of authority. Let us consider the United States. Despite the wide, wide gap between CEOs and the minimum wage earners in large companies, the United States still consumes the world's resources inequitably, a statement which should this point, be a fact.

Much of what is bought in America is not produced here, and much of what I eat, type on and wear has been imported from around the world. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, a wise man quipped, and we're the ones with the circlets of shrubbery on our heads...

Botch continues to be right, that America has a parallel to Mediterranean history, and it ain't the Athenians. All roads lead to Rome, and if I've learned anything from my experience it is that most of the talent and material in the world is shipped here to be consumed. Consider, for a moment, the object you're using to read this with. It could be a computer monitor, your iPhone/Blackberry/Sidekick screen, or whatever else science has come up with in between making new bombs and new TVs. It was probably compiled in China, the microchip sent in from elsewhere, then shipped back to wherever here is to be sold. This also goes for your jeans, my tshirts (ah, but they had silkscreens placed on them in America...) my hoodies, my watches and my cell phone.

Well, thank God for underage laborers for making everything on my body including my underwear. It allows me the free time to bemoan this, while also getting an education that costs more than half the world will ever get paid for a lifetime of their work. And yet, I continue to worry about girls more than my own work.

To include my own missteps into this week's lexicon of hedonism: There is hardly ever silence in my waking hours, and that's probably the most direct form of hedonism, since I far prefer to listen to music than people. If we're going for a textbook definition, then that is the best way I can show of pleasure as a way of life. I have more pleasure listening to music than interacting with people, and that's my hedonism. Pleasure ought to be pursued above all, right? Well, there you go.

To tie this back into the rest of the post, evaluative hedonism I think is the one that I (and most of America) are guilty of. Evaluative hedonism is defined as "pleasure is what we ought to desire or pursue". The pleasure, in this case, is the unknowing of...oh, to hell with it.

Ignorance is bliss, motherfuckers. Let's revel.