This American Life recently did an excellent show about John Maynard Keynes; especially regarding his life, his economic policy, and how it relates to Obama's stimulus plan. I've got fairly clear views politically, but find it nearly impossible to "pick a side" when it comes to economics: both sides of the big issues seem to make an equal amount of sense. This may be over-simplified, but I believe I can summarize the argument to four levels:
1.) Anti-Keynesian: FDR and his New Deal are given more credit than he deserves; his policies may have even extended the depression.
2.) Keynesian: The New Deal was mishandled; most of the gains it could have fostered were negated by tax increases and efforts to balance the budget.
3.) Anti-Keynesian: Economic downturns shouldn't be meddled with in the first place: they are nothing more than natural correction cycles.
4.) Keynesian: Even if that's true, without intervention, a recession will fall into a downward spiral and destroy the economy: less production -> less spending -> even less production -> even less spending, and so on, ad infinitum.
I'm not quite clear on how inflation fits into this; who can take it further?
Encounters at the End of the World SPOILER ALERT I watched Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, an account of the filmmaker's journey to Antarctica. In it, he takes a similar approach to his other documentary efforts: using voice-over to identify and develop his exploration of various existential or philosophical questions; or, to borrow a term from one of his earlier films, the Poetic Truth of his subject. Sometime it works, and the resulting words and images are truly compelling; othertimes, all that prevents it from descending into abject pretentiousness is Herzog's apparent naïveté.
Formally, Herzog is a master of his craft. Encounters is smartly edited and perfectly paced, and there are many occasions across the film's ninety minutes during which everything comes together: in preparing for a dive, the scientists don't speak during their ritual, and are likened to priests preparing for mass, and Herzog, following suit, falls silent, and we all descend into the "cathedral" and spend several minutes exploring on our own, accompanied only by music, the strange and lush type with which Herzog always manages to endow his films.
From a documentary perspective, Herzog manages to discover an impressive variety of noteworthy people and events, and records them all in turn. The trouble is that his forced interpretation in terms of poetic reality often conflicts with, or even cheapens, the literal reality of what he apparently didn't plan on finding. Herzog did find a surprising number of truly fascinating people. In some cases he lets them speak for themselves, such as the Native American plumber who had been told that his fingers and "long rib cage" were physiological proof that he was descended from Aztec and Mayan royalty. Too often, however, Herzog takes it upon himself to summarize the tales he was told, justifying this at one point by saying that the story "went on forever". These are problems that could have been solved by proper interview conduct and editing, but by not being prepared to handle this type of material, Herzog damages his subjects. Indeed, he has already sabotaged his own efforts, as by the nature of his poetic truth approach, he cannot be trusted with the literal truth. In condensing the stories of his interview subjects, he has robbed them of their conviction. At points he seems to be tampering with reality by hitting his subjects with questions such as "is this a great moment?", or "you escaped [from behind the Iron Curtain]; how big a drama was that?" The low-point comes during an interview with a Marine Ecologist working closely with penguins, which Herzog had set up with the romantic notion that the scientist was "in his solitude not much into conversations with humans, anymore." Herzog then describes difficulty in getting this man to keep talking, but ends up asking him about gay penguins and penguin insanity, making both himself and the subject look foolish in the process.
Like his other documentaries, Encounters at the End of the World is worth watching. As a documentary, the film contains more than enough substance to hold interest. The flaw is that its maker cannot necessarily be taken at his word, which is, of course, a sticky situation when you're dealing with reality. I would urge you to remember this while watching, but Herzog generally manages to involuntarily remind the viewer of the nebulous nature of the reality that he tries to discover.
Yellowfin: D- [flavorless] Salmon: A+ [buttery] Salmon Roe: A- [firm and fresh] Halibut: D+ [gamey] Red Snapper: B- [mediocre]
Notes: This is at least the fifth time I've had a piece of salmon at Kikugawa, and every time it is outstanding. Buttery, bursting with flavor, and a little oily; I wonder if they roll it in MSG or meth amphetamine to fool my decadent American palate. Arrived around 7pm on a Thursday, and the place was still deserted. How do they stay in business?
Let's face it: I've always had a problem with the entire punk set of genres. Even after I learned to accept and eventually seek out A) angry screaming, B) loud noises, and C) instrumental dissonance in music, I still took exception to what I felt to be a lack of musical accomplishment in most of what I heard of the punk aesthetic. I considered it an affront that anyone would go into the studio and make a record using only attitude and anger power, not having bothered with learning to play their instruments or the writing of compelling songs, and I found it irksome in the extreme that so many people apparently enjoyed listening to the resulting boring, bothersome, and structurally retarded music.
Let's continue being honest and sharing our feelings: I still feel this way about a lot of these bands. In addition to the problems with form I described above, the tone put forth by this music was incompatible with my personality and lifestyle; I simply wasn't the Fuck You type of guy that these records were aimed at. Such fundamental clashes would probably have kept me away from the hard stuff forever, if Fugazi hadn't come into my life and my stereo.
I can't recall how it happened, but in a crimson flash, I was listening to Red Medicine over and over again. Suddenly there was a bridge between what I wanted to listen to and what the enemy was playing: a band with roots in hardcore but with tremendous musical integrity. To be honest, I didn't have much use for their earlier records, but things only got better as the band drifted over time toward my side, first with End Hits [the Instrument demos were better], and eventually peaking with The Argument: a record that I considered to be perfection from end to end, put out by some old punkers from D.C.
Once these albums had been played, memorized, and exhausted, I went soft for a long, long time. There were a few visitors: a little Iggy Pop, The Clash, Television, At The Drive-In, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Rival Schools; but nothing stuck around for long.
Now, here comes The Chemistry of Common Life from Fucked Up. O, how I love this record; how I love it. I want this record playing at my funeral. I want it to abuse me and then comfort me tenderly as though nothing happened. I want it to have like ten-thousand of my babies. The songs are fantastic, the brutal vocals make me feel like the Fuck You guy that I'm not, and the layered guitar sounds - executed by a man calling himself 10,000 Marbles - reach for a new level of sonic shit-yer-pants: in addition to being lovingly and meticulously crafted and perfectly suited to their context, they just SOUND. SO. COOL.
Maybe these are terrible examples of how I've supposedly embraced the punk sound: Fugazi is universally loved by fans of all genres, and most of the Fucked Up record is rock and roll that happens to have hardcore vocals. But like beloved Fugazi's records, Chemistry affords me a tenuous connection with all the thousands of other recordings that are ultimately unattainable, even if they are, by me, unwanted.
As most of my family have in recent years developed characteristics common to the North American Foodie, the durian was already known to us - though never actually seen, or tasted. Or smelled. Durian is a fruit that grows in Southeast Asia. It is large and heavy, covered with sharp spikes, and those who choose to comment on its heady aroma - what I've come to call the Creature - usually wind up with, say, a comparison with the smell generated by the deepest segment of Orson Welles' large intestine, if it were to be unearthed six weeks after his death, immersed in a slurry made from medical waste and half-digested onions, then consumed and finally deposited by a moose with Crohn's disease.
Though the poor durian's reputation is always proceeded by its own reek, the consumption of its meat is a different story, altogether. This description put forth by a British naturalist is so tender it nearly makes me weep:
The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.
Thus, I was happy to arrive at my father's house with a large durian under each arm. I purchased them at Truong Thanh, an Asian market at 25th and Nicollet. We found that yet unopened, the durians produced a quiet, fruity smell that could only be detected in their close vicinity - and was actually quite pleasant. So the durians sat, under the Christmas tree. Each day I would inspect them several times for any sign of a crack in the shell, which would indicate ripeness.
It happened late in the evening. The smaller of the two had developed a crack, a whiff of which now indicated the olfactory demon within, which had taken possession of the poor fruit, like the family dog suddenly set upon by rabies. We placed the durian on the counter and gathered around it. I seized either side of the crack and the fruit sprang open unexpectedly like the alien in Independence Day, and we chuckled nervously like Brent Spiner, performing the autopsy. After removing half of the fruit's spiny jacket, we surveyed what looked like two undeveloped baby dinosaur fetuses which seemed to be made of scrambled egg, as the air in the room was quickly tainted by the Creature - which took the form of something dead and rotting. A glass of water sitting nearby began to bubble and turn brown. Emboldened by the euphoria of finally becoming acquainted with this object which we had thought and talked about, we surged ahead and manipulated one of the gooey lobes onto a plate. Picking apart, we found two hard brown lumps - each of which looked like the pill given to Westley by Miracle Max in The Princess Bride; it much have been a durian seed which restored his life. Finally, we tasted.
This would be the traditional point at which to describe the flavor, but there is very little I can say; it merely tastes like durian. How would you describe something with which there is no comparison? How would you describe the color blue, or the sensation of cold? I can say that the texture is irresistible - very smooth and custardy. The flavor is extraordinarily complex, and develops dramatically as the fruit is worked. It contains a small amount of what is detected in its odor, and a larger portion of what tastes similar to onions, though at the same time a number of pleasing tones can be detected. With so much happening all at once, it's difficult to develop an attitude toward the fruit as a whole - I loved parts of it, and detested others. To eat durian is without question a challenging culinary experience.
We had varying amounts - some just a taste, though my sister and I each had quite a bit. We shot a video of it for Andrew Zimmern. The Creature lingered. After consumption, the aspect of durian that remains is the onion taste, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Water, crackers; nothing would erase it. Before bed, in an act of desperation, I chewed up two olives stuffed with blue cheese, but even that was in vain. Over the next days and beyond, we all experienced durian flashbacks - a sudden and unexpected flavor recall - while smelling or tasting substances of a wildly varied nature. Apparently durian is like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans - there isn't a flavor or aroma existing in nature that isn't present in some form in its fruit.
When the smoke cleared, we had consumed two of the five lobes of the durian. Not wanting any more, but not wanting to waste it, we harvested the remaining meat and sealed it within a hermetically-sealed container used for transporting live organs, drove to the other side of town, and buried it, marking the area with hazardous waste sign, as if it were a headstone for a plague victim. I had heard from the same friend that clued me in on where to purchase the durian that it could be made into other treats, such as smoothies or cakes. In the morning we recovered the leftovers and my sister made it into cupcakes, using the fruit both in the batter and frosting. The panoply of flavors did work very well with the sugary sweetness of the cakes, though they were certainly possessed of the fruit's sensory heft and muscle. Though not nearly as complex as the durian on its own, they provided, for better or worse, a summary of what could be found within the flesh of that rare beast, and they even generated their own immature version of the Creature.
We found a few victims to feed the cupcakes to, most of whom took a nibble, nodded, and politely handed the morsel back. Everyone, however, is intrigued by the idea of the Smelliest Fruit on Earth. The gang at work has been interested in tasting durian, though I'm afraid that if I brought some in the Creature would set off the fire alarm, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for seven hundred people being evacuated in the middle of the day. Well, we'll see.
#2. I bought a motorcycle. An old motorcycle. Considering that its thirtieth birthday will fall next year, it's older than I am. It was listed on craigslist, and I went down and bought it from a less-than reputable shop that mostly sells scooters. It had a title, but I was soon to discover that the title needed amendment, and the shop had not transferred it into their own name before selling the bike to me. Having only the original owner's name and address, I sent him a letter with the necessary paperwork, and left the bike parked on the street while I left town for the weekend. When I returned late on a Sunday, it was to find empty asphalt where the bike had been. A call to the impound lot revealed that it had been towed for having been left ["abandoned"] on a city street for more than seventy-two hours. Additionally, I would be unable to release it from impound, not being in possession of a properly transferred title, showing that I was indeed the bike's owner. During a frantic telephone call to the shop the next day, I learned from the proprietor that he had bought the bike without even so much as a telephone number from the original owner. After a few days of continually pestering him [he was somewhat reluctant to assist me], his "service manager" finally turned up a telephone number by doing an internet search, a feat at which I had already failed. After both myself and the service manager had left messages for the original owner, I still had to wait several days for him to return the call, a period during which the impound lot was charging eighteen dollars a day for the bike's storage. I made contact and arrangements to meet with the original owner; he was not surprised that the shop was behaving irresponsibly, even indicating the possibility that the shop owner may have neglected to transfer the title for the reason that showing the sale of a certain number of motorcycles in a calendar year would require the purchase of a motorcycle dealership license, in addition to whatever he needed to sell only scooters. So, the paperwork was straightened out, but I still needed to wait a few days to reclaim the bike, in order to generate the nearly four-hundred thousand dollars necessary to get it out of hoc. To its credit, the bike put up only a minor fuss in starting up, despite being an antique forced to sit out in the weather for nearly two weeks. It had a frozen front brake and its alignment had been yanked out during the tow [they also clipped my fifty-dollar cable lock], but my sometimes-mechanic uncle and I sorted that out in short order.
A week after I purchased the bike, I learned "the hard way" that it has trouble with its charging system. After riding around for a hour or so with my buddy and his new, newer, and much more reliable motorcycle, I was unable to start it. Being brand-new to the world of mechanized two-wheeled transport, I had no idea what was wrong, and having exhausted all other options that came to mind, I enlisted another uncle to help me get it home the next day. His help was invaluable - we rented to motorcycle trailer in his pickup, which he insisted on paying for. The kid at U-Haul told us that the trailer had straps built-in, which we didn't think to question, until we got to the bike and had no way to secure it down. So, we improvised, tipping the bike part-way over in the trailer and resting it upon the spare tire. In the process we managed to spill some gasoline, put some scratches in the bike's gas tank, and leave my uncle's sunglasses on the trailer when we pulled out, but... mission accomplished?
Since, I've worked at determining why the bike keeps discharging the battery, but the problem remains. I've only been stranded once more by it. I had ridden to work for a periodic overnight shift, and after running out of things to do, left early at 4am. I made it within a mile or so of home when the bike couldn't maintain its spark, and I came up to a stoplight with a dead engine. I managed to get it restarted, but it would die again as soon as I flipped on the headlight [yes, it's old enough to have a headlight switch, rather than the headlight being always on, as with all modern bikes]. My idea was to pull the battery and bring it home for charging, but I had forgotten my screwdriver. I started walking and got to the grocery store about 4:30am to see if they were in on the screwdriver trade, but the closest I could get was a pair of paring knives for $1.29, with which I thought I might be able to coax out the battery screws. No joy, but I did manage to slice up my fingers a bit in trying. About equidistant in the opposite direction was a Walgreens. I never did find out if they carry screwdrivers - did you know that not all of their locations are open twenty-four hours? I decided that the effort I had already put in was greater than that required to simply push the bike home, so I was off. It only took 30-40 minutes, the early-morning air had not yet taken on its mid-summer heat, and I was able to climb on and roll down even the minor grades I encountered. Additionally, before 6am, there are few commuters around to gawk and few police officers around to question my motives, and we made it home safely. I also gained some insight into the extent to which you can run a relic motorcycle on battery power alone.
Small Tales of hardship and despair. This summer, while I've been absent from blog-postery, I've been participating in a series of mildly aggravating experiences.
#1. I first heard about squirrel invasions a mere few days before it nearly happened to me. A friend of mine works at a rental office for an apartment complex, and she reported that squirrels had been entering their units through unsecured windows with air conditioners. Having a built-in prejudice against those filthy, disease-ridden rodents, I could hardly imagine something so terrible as coming home from work to find a cornered and desperate pair in the process of destroying my home and sanctuary. I was napping on the couch later in the week when I was awakened by - something - happening outside the window. Peering through the blinds, I saw a squirrel sitting on the windowsill, giving me the eye-ball. I tried to frighten it by pounding on the window, but it seemed reluctant to leave; it had already assembled a collection of leaves and twigs - the beginnings of a nest? Immediately my thoughts settled on the other window, outfitted with air conditioner and nothing but a pair of thin plastic accordion walls standing between inner peace and outside turmoil... When I arrived at home from work the next day I saw that one of the filthy beasts was outside the air conditioner, and that it had been chewing on the plastic wall and the wooden window frame; I could actually see its grimy feet beneath the wall, inches from my nose. In a panic I tried to frighten it off - pounding on and shaking the air conditioner, turning it on and off; it took a mighty effort to effect its retreat. In its absence I saw the reason - in the bottom of the window sill, laying on its back and mewing, was a tiny, hairless, blind baby squirrel. I allowed myself a few seconds of shock and revulsion, and then was seized by action. Months prior, in preparation for a sushi party, I had bought several hundred pairs of wooden chopsticks at United Noodles [to the tune of four dollars]. Now, as if possessed by the spirit of some fallen wartime hero, I took up a pair of chopsticks and attempted to negotiate their ends underneath the squeaking squirrel-spawn, without withdrawing the plastic wall in case the mother returned and decided to eat my face. The idea was with the business ends of the chopsticks under the baby and using the edge of the sill as fulcrum, I could catapult its helpless body out of my window and my life - forever. I admit that in my desperation I wasn't very gentle, and may have injured the specimen during this exercise. Before I could accomplish my goal, the mother returned, and I refocused my efforts on antagonizing it sufficiently so that it would never return. After several moments of pushing on the plastic wall and poking its feet with the chopsticks, it finally retreated again, managing to take the baby with it. Immediately I removed the air conditioner from the window and slammed it shut before collapsing in exhaustion.
When the air turned hot again I risked the air conditioner again, trying various tactics - putting tin foil down on the window sill [apparently they don't like to walk on it], spraying the area down with WD-40 [apparently they don't like to smell it], and reinforcing the gaps with styrofoam - but this last effort served only to give the squirrels something additional to chew on. Still, the summer has now passed, and I did defend my apartment's sanctity and honor. Next June, the battle begins anew.
.jpeg)
