Month: January 2004

Nostalgia is a corrosive emotion

I’m on the way back from LWE on the Limoliner luxury executive bus, listening to the people behind me talk about nearest-neighbor compression algorithms and realtime processing in embedded devices. I think they were at the show too. The bus is fabulous: clean, spacious, comfortable, and of course it has net access. Highly recommended: NYC to Boston for less than the train and in roughly equivalent style, although not quite as fast. And of course, network.

In a few weeks I’ll be going to Vegas and I’m thinking about the last time I was there, at another conference, in November 2000. I was so lonely and for such good reasons: I kept burning my bridges. I guess I still burn them, or at least let them burn and watch them fall. Nonetheless, I’m quite attached to those ashes and charred embers of my past.

For example, I used to keep a set of Wired Magazine issues from 1999 to 2001. They got fatter and fatter, then they shrank abruptly with the crash. I eventually tossed them– what was I doing with back issues of a magazine I don’t even read? I still have a Kozmo.com receipt and an Eazel t-shirt. I have fewer physical mementoes of people from my past, but I think of them more often, turning moments over and over in my mind. And there’s music and weather and places and tones of light that remind me of people and times. I used to be more susceptible to this sort of thing, really. Now I sort of slip into a reverie, but I used to feel gutwrenching nostalgia or pain or anxiety seeing a picture of an ex or driving past the house of a friend I’d lost.

They say nostalgia is corrosive; I think it may have been Sartre who talked of it as politically dangerous. I certainly agree that it’s as destructive as unspoken resentment.

Nonetheless, I’m listening to Tom Wait songs: “Picture in a Frame” which is about promises and the pain of fulfilling them, and “Black Market Baby,” which is about temptation, and the pain of giving in to it despite knowing it’s the worst possible choice:

Liars say their prayers to her
and sailors ring her bell
the way a moth mistakes a lightbulb
for the moon and goes to hell
There’s no prayer like desire,
there’s amnesia in her kiss,
she’s a swan and a pistol
and she will follow you like this…

Etc. ‘n’ Things

I’m in NYC this week at LinuxWorld Expo. The elevators at my hotel are being reprogrammed and reinstalled, or something, and the upshot is that it takes up to fifteen or twenty minutes to leave the building at peak times. 50 floors, a dozen or so elevators, general insanity.

The tradeshow is what a tradeshow is: sore back, lots of hand-shaking and smiling, dry air, overpriced everything (I thought three bucks for a Coke was bad, but apparently the actual show management prices are worse: for having anything delivered to the show floor– a letter, say, or a laptop– the fees start at $200. This is called “drayage” which is defined as “the use of a dray” or “the fee paid for the use of a dray.” And a dray, as you all know, is a horsecart or similar low cart used for pulling heavy things around, which has largely been replaced by wood pallets and forklifts.)

At the end of the day I begin to wonder if I’m repeating myself. I am, of course, but I can’t remember if I’ve said a particular portion of my spiel to any given customer. After a few hundred times, it gets confusing.

Anyway, after all the polish and shine of the day, I was amused to find Robert Love selling an ironic trucker hat. Oh, sure, trucker hats are ironic appropriation in and of themselves– but this one is a trucker hat’s trucker hat. Brilliant. (See also the Dave Camp fanboy shirt).

Dope

NYT article on sports and doping:

Ultimately, the debate over athletic doping extends beyond sport. ”The current doping agony,” says John Hoberman, a University of Texas at Austin professor who has written extensively on performance drugs, ”is a kind of very confused referendum on the future of human enhancement.”

First the athletes, then the rest of us mortals.

In addition to the various details of the dopnig world — the way legit science filters into the supplements, the fact that there’s an international trade in urine samples, and that urine-sample-couriers are routinely bribed — they note that the word “doping” has been in use since about 1900 and apparently is related to the Dutch word “dop” which referred to the pre-battle booze Zulu warriors drank.

Feelings

After work I trudged through the cold and went home and had hot soup and some whiskey and played some video games with my girl (how lucky am I to find a girlfriend who will play video games with me?) and went to bed and it was all good.

Today, I am listening repeatedly to “Sleep the Clock Around.” I used to listen to it when I was really low– I’d get in the tub and put it on repeat and lie there trying to relax from an incredibly long day of back pain and stress and deadlines and loneliness. And today it seems like a happy song, not a sad one. Not sure why.

I may actually get this article done on time, which will be good. I’m at around 2000 of the 3000 words required, and about 2/3 through with what I have to say, so that’s a good sign. On a tight schedule because it has to go out for Brainshare. Exciting!

To do list

  • Make a shirt that says “DEAD MONEY” or “INEXPERIENCED PLAYER” and wear it to Las Vegas.
  • Make a shirt that says “DISSIDENT PATRIOT” and wear it on an airplane, possibly while going to Vegas.
  • Make fliers explaining the scientific method for idiots and pass them out. Ideally do this when it’s warm out, at a baseball game, near that guy who passes out the Chick tracts.
  • Make fliers explaining that Santa does not exist. Pass them out at Downtown Crossing during early December. Fight with parents of small, crying children who suddenly realize that their parents are not perfect, which is I suppose a good lesson to teach one’s children.

    • How I’m Feeling

    Today I feel manic. Can’t concentrate. Chewing gum like mad. Listening to “It’s a Wonderful LIfe” again and again and again. Not the movie. The song that goes “I’m full of bees who died at sea, I’m a bog of poisoned frogs, I’m the dog that ate your birthday cake, it’s a wonderful life.” It’s got this tinny, distant, off-kilter waltz beat, and a broken-record hiss-and-pop in the background, and I think the stereo tracks are just slightly off from each other, so it feels like being face-up in the gutter watching the street spin.

    Not good signs. I sense drunkenness in my future, or possibly huddling under the blankets crying, or both.

    Why Mars?

    JFleck, whom I admire greatly, defends the Mars plan. I mean, yeah, this is after all the 21st century, and such. But really my question is not “why Mars” but “why now?” and “why this, over feeding the hungry, curing cancer, or stopping AIDS?” (Well, I guess those would require politically inconvenient science like common sense economics and nutrition, genetic research, and promoting the use of condoms, all of which our current administration opposes.)

    Yes, I want space travel to work. I want to strip-mine the moon as much as the next guy. But come on, we haven’t got the cash right now because we’ve given it all to people making over $350k/year already, and if we give it to NASA we’d basically be giving it to a dysfunctional, wasteful organization. They need a completely new philosophy. And while we’re at it can we just give them, say, 1% of the military budget?

    I feel like this is Saddam again: yes, Saddam is a bad, bad man who should be stopped, but you’re doing it badly and for all the wrong reasons! If you want to give a boost to basic research, double the direct research budgets and give money to schools.

    Asking NASA to fly to Mars on any budget, even one double or triple what Bush wants to spend on it, is asking for another shuttle disaster and ten or fifteen more dead heroes to mourn, which I suppose will take the public’s mind off the fact that they’re being screwed out of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    Police Power

    Friend of mine seems to be in trouble with the law, although he’s not sure why. Apparently the FBI just showed up at the door and displayed a warrant and took away his computers (yes, plural, he’s a programmer). They left his ipod but kept the cable. Word from friends who have had the same treatment is that you’ll never get the machines back, so you might as well just write them off and buy new ones. All I have is questions.

    Does insurance pay for things that the government impounds for investigation? I mean, what about a rental for while you’re waiting for the old one back? How do you get to work if your car is impounded and there’s no bus? Is this how police departments get their IT equipment? Maybe they were just crooks impersonating FBI agents? I’d have wanted proof– maybe you could call 911 and ask. Is there an FBI hotline for things like this? “What the fuck do you want from me?” I mean, do you need to file a FOIA request just to find out why you’re being arrested? Can you file such a request from prison? Can you it up online once they’ve taken away your internet access?

    I guess this really is a police state after all. Maybe I should really reconsider that Canada thing. Montreal can’t be much colder than this, and condos are cheaper there by a long shot anyway. On the other hand, freedom of speech in Canada is badly broken.

    More on Feeling Permanent

    I joked awhile ago that, on the one hand, I really hate the idea of moving again, but on the other hand, my girllfriend doesn’t like eggplant, and that may be a real showstopper there. Some of my readers may have taken this as sincere advice. Neither vegetable preference nor the inconvenience of moving is a good indicator of relationship quality. I regret any confusion my previous statement may have called.

    In addition, it has been brought to my attention that no-limit poker is probably not an adequate metaphor for a relationship. Love is not about losing or winning, and barely about chance at all. Nor does someone else having “a better hand” ever really come into it. It’s right, I am told, when you know that you prefer your partner to any other, no matter what, when if you could see or know all the options, you’d stick with yours anyway. There is no definitive best, after all, and you’re not going to lay down your cards and lose– you just walk on hand in hand. And if someone has a better relationship, it’s not really a reflection on you. There are no prizes outside of the satisfaction of the relationship itself. It’s not a fucking contest, Aaron.

    Will I be pretty, will I be rich? Que será será….

    Winner

    Finally, I get to make a post for which comment-spam won’t be off-topic: reviews of the latest GSK products. I love how marketing messaging for big pharma can get into Iraqi-minister-of-information levels of denial:

    I asked Fleming … is the football-through-tire image almost too on the nose, in a legal sense?
    “I don’t think anyone has drawn that comparison,” he said, totally deadpan.
    Honestly, you’ve never heard anyone compare the football-through-tire thing to, um, doing it?
    “I’ve never heard that.”

    If he had, it would make the ad an “indicated” ad, meaning it would require information about how you’re likely to get a heart attack or AIDS or something if you use the drug improperly (say, to fuel weekend-long sex binges).