"Hyperbole researchers have arrived at, without possibility of argument or refutation, the single greatest moment in all of creation, now and forevermore," said the project's lead scientist, Dr. Lloyd Gustaveson, activating the hyperbolic chamber's gazillion-ultra-watt semantic resonator at a gala launch party Monday. "The divine flame kindled by our new hyperbolic chamber will cast its light down through the centuries, making the Promethean fire that brought forth life on earth seem like a brief and guttering spark. Behold—we recast the cosmos in the image of the ultimate!
...Popular Science quickly placed the chamber on the fold-out cover of its next issue, which reads, "FUCKING AWESOME!!! THE BALLS-OUT H.C. IS 40 TIMES BETTER THAN SEX... AND COUNTING!!!"
Although it is difficult to find critics of the EHC-1 Alpha, those who oppose the machine do so vocally. The project's most prominent critic is Sandia National Laboratories' Dr. Owen Comstock, who argues that hyperbolic-chamber research has little social value and that federal funds would be better spent on his project, the high-energy, lowest-common-denominator-inductive Supercolloquial Mundane Adjectival And Onomatopoeic Accentuator.
"EHC-1 Alpha?" Comstock said. "Pfft. More like the craptastic crapobolic crapulator of crappity-crap-crap. Blarf. In addition, it is ugly as ugly can get, raises several safety issues, and is so freaking stupid I had to puke at how stupid it is.
For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want...the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less...Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.
Consider the cognitive demands that televised narratives place on their viewers. With many shows that we associate with ''quality'' entertainment -- ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'' ''Murphy Brown,'' ''Frasier'' -- the intelligence arrives fully formed in the words and actions of the characters on-screen. They say witty things to one another and avoid lapsing into tired sitcom cliches, and we smile along in our living rooms, enjoying the company of these smart people. But assuming we're bright enough to understand the sentences they're saying, there's no intellectual labor involved in enjoying the show as a viewer. You no more challenge your mind by watching these intelligent shows than you challenge your body watching ''Monday Night Football.'' The intellectual work is happening on-screen, not off.
But another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties.
Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind...If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over ''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand Theft Auto over Quake. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture.
"This record is fresh, revelatory and graceful." That's Russell Crowe, writing with customary modesty about his upcoming solo record, "My Hand, My Heart."...if you need some help appreciating its quiet power, you may find it useful to read the 1,000-word explanatory "Background to Raewyn" that Crowe has posted in the news section of his site. I say don't waste your dollar. The song is dull, sentimental, confessional singer-songwriter blahness.
Confined to his quarters for 42 days as punishment for dueling, the French soldier Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852) decided to undertake a journey around his room. By treating his bed, his armchair, the artworks on the wall and his small library as major tourist sites, he planned to reflect upon their history, their importance to him, and the philosophical questions that they brought to mind. Just as some Shelleyan romantic might stand before the grandeur of Mont Blanc or weep amid the ruins of the Parthenon, so de Maistre would thrillingly confront the ordinary objects around him -- and really see them for the first time. As he proved to himself, "The perceptions of the mind, the sensations of the heart, the very memories of the senses, are inexhaustible sources of pleasure and happiness for man."
William Blake said that one could "see a world in a grain of sand/ and a heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour." De Maistre's A Journey Around My Room (1795) and its sequel, A Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room (1825), might be test cases for that proposition. Life, after all, gains value from the intensity of one's engagement with it. By acts of concerted attention, we can invest even the most ordinary activities or objects with meaning, purpose and satisfaction. "A bed," writes de Maistre, "witnesses our birth and death; it is the unvarying theatre in which the human race acts out, successively, its captivating dramas, laughable farces, and dreadful tragedies. It is a cradle bedecked with flowers; -- it is the throne of love; -- it is a sepulchre."
Spaceways Incorporated sees [Ken] Vandermark further exploring his muse, and paying tribute to those whose music influenced his. On Thirteen Cosmic Standards, the trio of Vandermark, bassist Nate McBride, and drummer Hamid Drake cover the songs of Sun Ra and Funkadelic...The trio let loose some deep, dark, and dirty funk, swimming in sax squeal, upright and electric bass and drumming frenzy...
Spaceways Incorporated covers self-described "cosmic standards" from Sun Ra and George Clinton. Clinton in funk and Ra in jazz, both innovators in their respective fields, never received major attention or reached mass audiences. Their music tends to be complicated, lengthy, and not easily swallowed. Vandermark untangles and simplifies lines, covering the music almost straight. Playing these large ensemble giants in trio also helps. The music is like candy, not sweet yummies but fireballs.
"It's like in that David Foster Wallace novel Infinite Jest, where there's that part where there's a video tape that they put on and it makes their lives obsolete in a way or makes their sense of living meaningless, and they just shit themselves and die. And with every record I'm trying to make one that makes all other records obsolete and makes people shit themselves and die," [Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes] says.
"Men Seeking Women"
TwoFootTackle
Don't Just Read the Headline...
Until I compose something actually interesting, this will have to do....
Age: 33
Gender: Man
Location: Fairfax
Woman for Dating
If you and me should ever go to hell
Come on, let's go right now
Come on, let's go right now
(solo)
I think we're the same in many ways
And I admit we had some memorable days
[pause]
But just not very many.
Negawaka wa
hana no shita nite
hary shinamu
sono kisaragi no
mochizuki no koro
I wish to die
in spring, beneath
the cherry blossoms,
while the springtime moon
is full.
