Author: Aaron Weber

ETA?

Everyone else is commenting on the bombing in Spain. If I know my terrorist groups, (I may be quite off base, but bear with me) it’s not ETA’s usual style. As far as I can tell, their attacks were usually aimed at police forces. They’d plant a bomb, call it in, wait for the civilians to evacuate the area, and then detonate it when the police arrived to defuse it. This is the attack of a group which feels it has no friends left in mainstream society, which is attacking society itself.

ETA may have lost all moderate allies when concessions were made over autonomy, and now is reduced to a smaller, more radical core that simply wants to attack Spain’s hegemony, civilian sympathy be damned. Or it could be the work of another group trying to tear down Spanish society; the knee-jerk guess there is radical islamists, since the other major foes of the West per se, communism and anarchism, are not quite the forces they were.

I don’t imagine it could have been Catalan separatists; they’re not quite so violent or extreme, and seem to be getting what they want within the national framework. I could see them having a concerted letter-writing campaign and some very noisy protests, and maybe a ballot initiative or a tax revolt. But not a terrorist campaign.

It had really begun to feel like Spain was almost totally recovered from the consequences of the Spanish Civil War, and of Franco’s repression of linguistic and ethnic minorities. Maybe it has, and this is a completely new problem. But I doubt it.

Linky Goodness

Holy Anorexia, or penance and bodily mortification through starving, has a long and complicated history.

John Ashcroft and separation of church and state. Remember, this is a man so disliked by the general public of (very conservative) Missouri that he lost an election to a dead man.

Neat flash thingy: Tulse Luper Suitcases.

I wanted to say something funny about this, but I’ve been saving it for long enough I should just link: Journal of Manly Arts. Found through doing research on boxing.

Department of the Obvious

Study Finds that Teenage Virginity Pledges are Rarely Kept.

Well, Duh.

Another obvious thing I encountered today: the admonition in a style guide for technical writers “Do not use italics or bold face to compensate for unclear text.” That would be equivalent to talking really loud so that the foreigners could understand you.

Non Sequitur: “Game Over” the new sitcom about video game people, is moderately interesting.

More Personal Mottoes

The Bloggies have a category for “Best tagline.” I’m rooting for MightyGirl with “Famous among dozens.” Although given her following, she might have to cop to being (gasp) popular.

My great-great-grandfather, “Texas” John Slaughter, a Texas Ranger, was known in his day for dispensing rough justice, and had an actual song composed about him. It featured the charming lines “with Texas John Slaughter men did what they oughter cause if they didn’t they’d die.” That may have been from the TV show (also listed on IMDB) but I think it was from movie (curiously, not featured in IMDB). Addie Slaughter, played in the TV show by Annete Gorman, was my grandmother. I should note that she was mortified by the disgraceful and inaccurate portrayal of her childhood; I know this because we made her watch one of the movies for at least ten or fifteen minutes before she got too frustrated with it and stomped out. I was pretty young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of what happened.

I’m not sure I have a real personal motto, but I often feel better when I remind myself of an old Chilean saying, one I learned early on but understood only after months of intensive drinking: “Filo, no importa,” “Eeeh, it doesn’t matter. When I say it, I allow myself to stop worrying about things that seem, momentarily, to be incredibly important.

Obit

Integrity, knowledge, and ability were hallmarks of every endeavor David Weber undertook. In addition he always maintained an ironic sense of humor, and his mantra that “There is never enough time, there is never enough money, and nothing ever fits” was legendary.

Status Anxiety, II

So, the first few bits of Status Anxiety are quite good, but I have a feeling that de Botton is going to fail to connect them all into any sort of coherent whole. His basic premise– that status is what we want when we claim to want wealth and material goods, and that modern society comes with a lot of anxiety about status– is more or less obvious to anyone who’s thought about it, which is basically everyone. And rather than use his premise as a starting point, he basically meanders around it for awhile and then leaves it at that. Hence the rather cutting review in the Guardian, and the straightforward but equally negative one in the Independent.

OK, new topic: Lost in Translation

OK, really. No more posts about the gay marriage debate and how it’s just like the legalization of divorce, or birth control, or what have you. Let’s talk about, oh, movies. Apparently, some musicians are consorting with and doing business with adult film stars. There’s a surprise. No, really, a real topic. Something serious, not the usual crap banter.

I saw Lost in Translation, finally, and I realized two things: one, Bill Murray really deserved that Oscar. Sean Penn can play a hardass eight days a week without breaking a sweat– that’s just him being himself. Remember when he would beat up journalists for fun? Mystic River was a great movie, and he did a great job in it, but Bill Murray’s role was deeper, and required greater range and expression, was more of a reach, and I think he got shafted when the more popular picture won.

Two, I now understand my reluctance to see the movie, and to see a lot of other serious movies recently. The anomie expressed in the movie is my entire day-to-day life. There are brief instants when I glimpse life through my own eyes but for the most part I spend my days behind a shield of ironic detachment, foreign to actual living. Yes, this is overblown, but I do feel insulated from reality to a disturbing degree. I didn’t want to see that movie because it would remind me that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. I’m all too familiar with the feeling of being surrounded by signs and voices whose meaning I can only guess at: watching the expats in restaurants, streets, subways. The worst was the sex: the strip club, where he’s watching these women contort themselves; the unexpected arrival of a call-girl he can’t understand; even the pointless sex with the expat lounge singer, all represent sex at its least intimate, least arousing, least satisfying extent. Yeah, there’s a redeeming connection and a kiss at the end, but they just serve to highlight how miserable the rest of existence really is.

Since I saw the movie I’ve felt completely hollowed out inside.