Getting Off Of Square One

There's a file on my desktop called The Question, James. (It's an .RTF.) Inside are less than 10 questions with what I'm going to be doing with all the free time on my hands this week and how I"m going to use that time to either do something good for me, or get ahead on my work or figure something out about myself.

It's more boundary pushing. Trying to force myself into it. Tonight, I'm going to one of the drinking places in Rome alone or with someone. But I'm fucking going, regardless of who else is or isn't joining me. The place I'm staying just lost 95% of the people there, and I'm one of the few sticking around for the next ten days, which means that I'll either go crazy or do something cool. On the plus side, this means that I'll go to a bunch of interesting places in the guidebook that I wouldn't have time to hit up otherwise.

They say "take advantage of the time", but I'm never really sure what it means aside from go to places that guidebooks like and do thinking that will produce results other people will like or at least find productive. Which, for the most part, is good. I finished another book, and not 2666, either. It's a book called Headspace: Sniffer Dogs, Spy Bees and One Woman's Adventures in the Surveillance Society by a Brit, Amber Marks.

It paints a real ridiculous picture of our State apparatuses, that they're all looking for ways to intrusively investigate as many people as possible in increasingly ridiculous fashion, ranging from sniffer dogs to "sabotage salmon." Yes, really. There were parts about Amber Marks in there, about her friends and acquaintances as she threads her way through security personnel and paranoid, suspicious MI5 types.

(Before I forget, I have to acknowledge how ridiculous it is that I already have a massive reading commitment on my plate and I still find a place on it for a book on surveillance through a non-traditional filter. It is pretty nuts. Bodies are dropping in 2666 like sideways rain and it's getting pretty hard to tell who's dead and who's alive.)


Turns out those surveillance services are all looking to nature for their inspiration, using ideas that just feel too ridiculous for the sci-fi of the 1970's. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say much more than I already said, it's a funny reveal, chapter after chapter. They're also pretty indebted to pseudo-science, which makes me wonder, if this is what PhDs and smart people believe, what that I take for granted in 50 years will be considered ridiculous? Probably a lot more than is fashionable. I mean, I know I was dumb five years ago, but I'm existentially embarrassed having it pointed out to me. This time, 2015, I know I'll shake my head at what I'm writing right now. Science is always moving, but not always in the right direction, so this book provides a sweet little reminder not to get too excited about what I believe.

I never would have bought it otherwise, but it was on sale (I got that, a book on Al-Sadr in Iraq, by Patrick Cockburn and a copy of A Book of Five Rings, the classic by Miyamoto Musashi for five Euros) and the cover was really unique and the different bright colors lined up nicely. Published by Virgin Books, it's a strikingly informal read, but pretty well researched. Of course, the research isn't cited directly, but placed in the back of the book, which makes it hard to quote.

To be fair to those surveillance services, they live in a world where a threat can materialize out of literally anywhere with heads of state, who, as expressed by Tony Blair (talking to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show), sleep at night with the fear that any kind of chink in the armor will be exploited (or perhaps already has) by terrorists who will acquire any kind of weapons they can get their hands on, the more powerful, pernicious and destructive, the better.

They don't want it on their conscience that they let down the people they're administrating, says Blair. I believe him. I may be naive for believing that. But at the moment, I'm looking from the outside in. And maybe in the next five years, I'll know.

90's godfathers Face To Face playing Jawbreaker's Chesterfield King. Uhhhh, that should be a no brainer, listen to it now. But on the off chance it isn't, Chesterfield King is one of the first Jawbreaker songs I ever listened to. It is about a girl, not being able to kiss her, ending up at a 7-11 parking lot, where the narrator gives a toothless woman a cigarette. Anyway. Listen to it. It should make you D'awww.

Faster Faster Faster

Today's update is rather scattered.

The Daily Show is taking shots at Fox News for deliberately editing videos to remove the context from President Obama's statements. (They turned If the Bush plan stays in effect, taxes will go up for everyone to I will raise everyone's taxes.) It's bad and disingenous, but kind of expected. Far better was the Staten Island Supreme Court piece (by Wyatt Cenac with John Oliver guesting) that seemed like it was edited down a little too much.

That's only an entree to Jon Stewart's interview with Meghan McCain (promoting her new book Dirty Sexy Politics, one of the most generic titles I've ever heard), daughter of well, duh. Mr. Stewart, I thought, spent too much time trying Meghan McCain as a proxy for her father and not enough talking to Meghan McCain. I would have liked to hear more about Meghan McCain's experiences with the Republican image consultants, who said she dressed like a stripper and was hurting her father's campaign. Maybe it's a little voyeuristic, but hell, these image consultants are often just bitter punch lines that hearing about them from someone my age who seems like she's saying something she believes is interesting listening for me.

Ms. McCain is an interesting person in her own right, as someone who is obviously out of step with the GOP machine and the daughter of a former maverick and presidential candidate. How much is her and how much is her father's influence or how much is her father's friends who still believe in the party? I wish that, also, had been explored. Sadly, no dice. Most of the time was taken up with Mr. Stewart being funny and both people trying to work through the awkwardness of the interview.

Being in what is a Mediterranean paradise with few worries or responsibilities reinforces something: I miss hardcore punk shows more than I let on. And it's almost impossible to explain this to my peers without the experience sounding like a punchline. "So you want to go to a concert where you can't sit down, you might get jumped on or punched in the head? And these things are positives?"

Yeah.

In other news: Last night I was invited out, just as I was about to get on the city bus to go back to campus, to an Irish pub. I declined, mostly because I didn't want to feel like an American that late with not enough money for a cab ride back. But, it raised a question afterwards: Should I have said yes? Yeah, yeah greener grass, but the point of this trip is new experiences, right? If this is true, then going to a supposedly Irish bar would count, since I don't go to any back home.

And, honestly, it's not every day that I feel adventurous and really able to go out on my own. Sometimes, not being adventurous is okay. My operating procedure out here is not being adventurous should happen less often than being adventurous. Anyway. This Irish pub has a place and a time, which could have been last night, but wasn't.

I've been having trouble sleeping, still, so I've been listening to Till Days Shall Be No More by Strike Anywhere pretty much every night, hoping it'll settle me down. The second half of the chorus is the best and the outro is surprisingly listenable. I usually dislike outros, but there's something so relaxing and surprisingly tender about it that it makes the cut.