Author: Aaron Weber

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.

Anxiety

I just started reading Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton. It’s about how, given the possibility of rising above our stations, we suffer more greatly from jealousy. Serfs were not jealous of nobles, they accepted their miserable lives as part of nature’s way. Once people figured out that wasn’t so, they became fiercely unhappy with their lot, and improved it, by revolution if necessary.

There are two ways to remedy anxiety about your standing: achieve greatness (this is impossible– no matter how great you are, there is still anxiety) or give up (this is either defeatism or buddhism, depending on your point of view). De Botton quotes William James: “How pleasant is the day when we give up trying to be young or slender.”

The specifics of the desired greatness vary from person to person. For example, Pablo Escobar always wanted to be great, by which he meant, he wanted to be popular, he wanted to be admired, he wanted a big house and a fancy car and a big TV and teenage hookers. He had all those things for awhile, before he was hunted down and shot at close range, finally. The book Killing Pablo is an excellent and unbiased account of the hunt and eventual capture. What I like most about it is the way that the author chronicles the good things that Escobar did, as well as the bad, and the ways that the US and Colombian forces had to make compromises with their ethics to eventually capture him. The author doesn’t pass judgement on anyone involved, and doesn’t need to, because the story holds up on its own as a tale of suspense and investigation, driven by Pablo Escobar’s status anxiety– and that of his customers in the US.

The original defense of marriage amendment

Oh, those liberals, at it again with their historicizing and comparisons of intolerance to intolerance. More importantly, and more convincingly, there’s an NYT editorial discussing the first constitutional amendment defending marriage:

“Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Roddenberry’s proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated, ‘Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited.’ He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were ‘abhorrent and repugnant,’ and he aimed to ‘exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy.'”

I wonder if discussion of this issue in certain elementary schools is legal, or if it constitutes the “teaching of homosexuality.”

Viva

I’m back. No real surprises to the lessons I’ve learned in Sin City: the house always wins, and the death of a relative or hotel guest is never convenient. Also, even if it’s very nice Champagne, it can still give you a wicked hangover.

Viva Ned Flanders

I’m headed for the land of bilking money, the land of Liberace (home of the world’s largest rhinestone!), the land of, well, ambivalence and flashing lights. I haven’t been since COMDEX 2000, when I wrote that last little bit on the city. This time it’s for not for work though– Bookdwarf’s best friend from high school is getting married. Let’s hope I manage to avoid that white wine spritzer that starts me down the Britney Spears-laden slippery slope to a Vegas marriage myself.