The Golden Ass

OK so for those of you who don't know, we are having a huge storm here with lots of flooding and rain, and my tires have no treads left so i figured it would be good to get the tires changed on my car. So i dropped my car off at AAA this morning as I arrived at work, which is just next door. But the parking lot of my work was flooded, so with my umbrella in my left hand, big green bag slung on my shoulder and coffee in my right hand I was walking toward the street to get to work on the sidewalk. Uumm, just then, randomly, the wind broke my umbrella. So here I am, still holding the handle of the umbrella in my left hand, running (I mean lumbering, thanks to my giant green bag) toward the street trying to catch my newly ineffective umbrella. It was a little bit of an extra challenge, because I was also trying not to spill my coffee. I was also laughing really hard realizing that the people in AAA could see me. LMAO. Well I didn't catch it in time and the umbrella went in the street. God bless my umbrella; may it rest in peace, wherever the 50 mile an hour winds have taken it. So, still laughing really hard I ran (uumm, lumbered) to work as fast as I could, unsuccessfully trying not to spill my coffee all over myself. Lmao. I arrived with a bang (literally, as the wind blew the door shut behind me), still laughing really hard and still holding the handle to my umbrella up for all to see and gaze at with wonder and amazement.

A little while later I had to take a dump. OK so I was having stomach issues this morning :P And when I flushed, well everything KINDA went down, but not EVERYTHING. So I had to flush again. But everything else is flooded around here, so the toilet flooded too - all over the bathroom floor. Then, fittingly, I broke the mop trying to squeegie the water out of it, lmao. Many paper towels later, the bathroom floor was pretty much OK. But not my stomach. So a little while later I went into a different, newer bathroom, with a newer toilet. It flushed fine, but I'm sure everyone heard the toilet paper dispenser fall to the floor with a resounding crash when I tried to wipe. Then everyone probably heard me laughing and the toilet flushing successfully.

Then later at lunch time, since its raining like crazy and I have no car, we called Papa Johns for a pizza delivery. Yes, I called PAPA Johns after breaking the little mini john. Their internet is down, and they are not taking any orders. Lol. A fitting end to a funny morning. :)

Then later in the afternoon, when i went to pick up my car at AAA, i found out that they DID IN FACT see what happened between myself, the wind and my former umbrella; and they were in fact laughing. AND i found out what happened to the umbrella, lol. It blew down the street (behind me when I was running to work) and hit a car! :P

The end.

I drink my coffee with lots of cream and sugar. And lately I've been drinking a lot of coffee. So a couple of weeks ago, when I went to do some field work at a local elementary school (measuring and taking notes), I naturally had my coffee with me. On my way out of the building, I realized that I didn't have my coffee with me. Being an air head, I naturally had no idea where in the vasness of that entire elementary school I had left it. I just drove back to the office, feeling guilty that I had left it somewhere for the nice janitor lady to have to pick up.

This morning, I went back to that same elementary school to put the finishing touches on my field work. Naturally, I had my coffee with me. I walked into one randomly chosen classroom that exemplified the typical conditions of many other classrooms like it in the school to take a few photographs. In order to take the photographs and make notes on my sheet of paper, I naturally put my coffee down. Being an air head, I walked out of the room without my coffee, which of course I didn't realize until I was half way back down the hall. I turned around, found the classroom I had just been in, and thought: “OK so where in this room did I leave my coffee?” I saw a 7-11 coffee cup just like mine sitting right next to where I had made my notes on my paper, so I picked it up and took a sip on my way out of the room.

Thank God there happened to be a water fountain just outside that particular class room, because that was the nastiest thing I have ever put in my mouth. I would not call it coffee, exactly. I was more like two week old gurdled half and half with a lot of sugar and cold coffee mixed in. When I poured it into the water fountain (after drinking a lot of water FROM said water fountain), there was some sort of unidentified slimy goo still stuck to the side of the cup. It was pretty nasty. And I drank it. Clearly the janitor had not picked up that coffee from two weeks ago. I no longer felt guilty, but I'm not so sure I'm happy with the trade off.

Now the kicker. On my way out of the elementary school today, I found myself thinking: “Now where on earth did I leave my coffee?”

True Story.

The Positivist: "Put enough monkeys in front of a typewriter, and eventually you'll get a Shakespeare."

I like this quote because positivism usually just pisses me off, but this is funny. A mathematictian, btw, ACTUALLY SAID this...and MEANT IT.

:))

A few minutes ago I was in the conference room working on the specifications for a couple of projects in our office. One of the architects, to whom I was not connected before working here, and who thinks of architecture quite a bit differently from myself, was in the adjacent room talking to the secretary about something. The architect popped his head in the conference room: “Jason, did you see this?” Jason: “See what?” Architect: “The building I designed…here…on the secretary's computer.” Me: (walking toward the secretary's computer): “No.” The architect went on to explain about the color of the doors and the sun screens and some other stuff. Eventually I asked, “Did so and so do these renderings?” Architect: “No, these are photographs.” Me: “What? These are photographs, of the actual building!?”

And I wasn’t joking. I thought they were virtual renderings. I felt bad for a minute, because in my own head that said something about my judgement of the building. Generally I think that if its a good building, no one will mistake a photograph of the building for a virtual rendering, whereas if someone DOES make such a mistake, it clearly says something about the building, especially these days, in light of, for example, Baudrillard. Anyway, then I felt bad because I was thinking ironic thoughts about which the architect guy in my office, standing next to me, was clueless (uuhh, hence the irony). Then I felt bad that I had said something out loud that reflected the silent irony. Then I felt bad because I saw no hope of a way to communicate clearly about the misunderstanding. NOR did I see how it would help the situation if I were to say, "Oh wait, I didn't mean anything by that comment about the renderings." That would only give him a clue that our conversation would have lead to a negative judgement of his building in my head! Babylon...is wierd. And I am still confused about how I should have handled it.

Now maybe I can giggle about it instead of feel bad.

Phil Jackson shaved!!

OK this isn't what this blog is usually for, but dernit I'm pissed about the Redskins and this is a Redskins venting post. They just now got done loosing to the previously 1-11-1 Bengals. They are now 7-7 and their season is effectively over with two games to go. There is nothing left. I won't be surprised if they loose the next two, one against Philly and the other against I forgot but someone at least halfway decent. I want to address three things in my rant. 1. How the F&^# did we loose to the BENGALS!? 2. What happened to the SEASON!? 3. What's worst of all, amongst those those depressing questions is, do the Redskins seem to have a FUTURE (and the answer seems to be no)?

1. I actually know a fair amount about football. I can typically watch a game and tell you exactly what happened. And not even factually like "So and so ran for so many yards and this guy had this turnover and that's what happened and it lead to this score." Usually NFL games are more complicated than that, and on top of that the involve a bit more of a macrocosmic view, if you will. They involve the whole history of a franchise, and...a game and even a play usually just involves a bigger picture. For example, last week the Redskins lost to the Ravens. The Ravens are like the Steelers. You generally won't out hit them, you can only keep up with them and hope to make some plays. Early in the game we found ourselves down 14 to null. At that point I predicted exactly what would happen. We would crawl back into the game (for a large variety of complicated factors), but then in the end the Ravens would win, basically because of something very simple: people get tired. And sure enough, the Redskins had climbed back into the game (were down like 7 or 10 points) and with 9 minutes or so left the Ravens go the ball, with the momentum belonging to the Redskins. The Ravens ran the ball down the throat of the Redskins, who typically have one of the best run defenses in the NFL (behind the Ravens and Stellers, btw), and ran out the clock for like 6 or 7 minutes (down to like the 3 minute mark or so) and scored a touchdown. Game over.

All that to say, I can follow an NFL game pretty well. But watching this Redskins-Bengals game - I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED! AND - I think that's because - what happend was...NOTHING! Nothing happened. Null, zero, nadda. At the beginning the Redskins turned it over. They stampeded us because we were playing like we were working on an assembly line, and from there on out they played like the horrible Bengals (but didn't do anything overly horrible mistake wise) and we played like the better team who was still working an assembly line, except our assembly line sped up a little. That is to say, we out played them statistically the rest of the way after the first quarter, but still lost. But I swear I can't really give you a real reason why we lost. We just...did. It feels like fate.

Update: I forgot to mention - Clinton Portis. He made the big hullabaloo outburst this week, but it didn't seem to have a lot to do with why we lost. I mean...he ran OK. Like everything else, our running game this week seemed pretty non-descript. It was like he ran and got nowhere sometiems, but then sometimes he had pretty good runs, and then he had a couple of heroic 2nd effort runs that got first downs. But like every other part of this game, it didn't really stand out but it also didn't really seem to be horrible, either. We just lost, and it feels inexplicably wierd and sad and crappy.

Update 2: Perhaps most disturbing as part of why we lost is that we played like we assumed we would win, when we had lost 4 of the last 5. Make it 5 of 6.

2. What happened to the season? We were 6-2 at the half way mark, and playing as well as anyone in the league. Everyone was saying that if we could get through the first 5 games with 3 wins, then we'd be golden, because of how tough the beginning of our schedule was. We got through the first 5 with 4 wins, but lost to what looked at that time to be pretty much the worst team in the league (they had just fired their head coach the week prior to our game against them) the Rams. We then beat the Browns, but barely (who were also pretty bad). That put us at 6-2, and high on everyone's list of "Wow" teams. I remember before the season looking at the schedule the second half and having two conflicting thoughts: "Umm, we have late games against good NFC East opponents, and records don't really matter in those games. But then we also have the Steelers and the Ravens late, and I'm not so sure our young defensive line and grandparenthood offensive line will do so hot against those two." Well, as it turns out, we got handled by both the Steelers and Ravens. The better teams clearly won both of those games, and it wasn't the Redskins. And we've lost to the Giants and Cowboys here in the second half. And we will probably loose to Philly at home now that the season is like the hot chick with a paper bag over her head - nothing to write home about (to ether your brother OR your Mom).

Oh and plus our offensive line is old like a piece of poop that was once good fertilizer but is now just dusty white crumbly stuff. They are all hurt and in pass protection they like fingers through which the sand crubmles and next thing you know Jason Campbell is on the ground. This was happenning a bit early in the year, too, but we were running the ball so well we were able to hide the problem. Now the line is so hurt that we can't run the ball, either, so with the still-new offensive system and what-not we just have no offense to speak of, really.

Update - back to the Clinton Portis thing. As I mentioned he had his outburst this week. Some people seem to be blaming the loss of the season on the players and their doing their own thing come hell or highwater despite whatever the coaches say or do. They cite Portis as a prime example. Well I can see their point, but Portis is a guy who is hard not to like, for all the reasons that Gibbs liked him. He's a workhorse. He plays through pain, which is more rare than it used to be, and he's just plain good. Before...everything...fell apart, he was the leading rusher in the NFL! I guess maybe to a degree he's a symptom of what's wrong with the team, but he's hard to blame with the loss of the season. I do think that maybe we'd be better off if the money spent on him were spent on the offensive and defensive lines and we had Ladell Betts and (a non-fumbling) Rock Cartwright as our running backs, but I'm not so sure of that. Portis is a heckufa player. And on top of that, I'm not even sure he was being selfish with his outburst. He would say that he was just doing what his Momma taught him to do, and...HE WAS! Considering where he came from, I respect the guy.

3. Redskins future? This is most disturbing at this point. I'm sad about the game, and I'm sad about the season, but I'd be less sad if I felt we had a future, but we don't. We seem to have a pretty darn good quarterback. Or, at least one who CAN be good. Especially, I think in the future, with his buddy Zorn. But the problem is, there are whispers that the Zorn man will be gone now that the season has tanked. And lastely, with that guy Snyder at the helm, our front office has has the patience of an 8 week old puppy who has to pee. The only guy who got any leeway was ALREADY in the Hall of Fame, and that was Joe Gibbs. I don't think Dan Snyder is Christian (could be wrong, of course), because next to Clinton Portis, Gibbs is God in the eyes of Vinny Snyderato. Well Gibbs couldn't get it done, and I think I might be with John Riggins on this one. Jim Zorn hasn't lost his locker room, his locker room has lost Jim Zorn. There is no righting this ship. Riggins says that the best thing to happen to Zorn might just be to get fired, because these players do what they want, as Clinton Portis proved this past Tuesday with his outburst on the radio show "The John Thompson Show" and as Santanna Moss proved with his 15 yard Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty after a touchdown. But Zorn gone would mean something like 8 new offensive systems for Jason Campbell in 9 years.

In other words, we would suck again next year. But even if Zorn is back and Campbell puts up Hall of Fame numbers for a year, we will have an offensive line that is all like 400 pounds but also all like 40 years old. And you can't draft a good offensive line one year and then suddenly have an offensive line that can be the offensive line of a really good football team in 1 year. Its just not possible. I don't have statistics on this, but I would guess that 40 to 50 percent of the Left Tackles drafted in the first round since 1988 haven't panned out. And Chris Samuels, btw, is now officially old. His age, is a big part of our offensive woes. He's done for the season, out, gone. When we were hiding our pass protection problems with our running early in the season, we were running behind him. Suddenly his knee started hurting simply because he's old, and he couldn't go for a couple weeks. Suddenly we couldn't run or pass the ball, and now we suck. He came back for a few weeks, and the running kinda sorta improved a bit, but he tore his triceps muscle, pretty much also because he's old. In his place now is an undrafted free agent.

And then there is the Vinny Snyderato factor. I told my Mom before the season started that I had a serious fear that as long as Dan Snyder (owner) and Vinny Cerrato (this being his first year as like the official General Manager) were running this team that we were going to suck. Then we didn't go on the wild spending spree in the off season, and we actually made like 10 draft pics! I thought, "Hhmm, maybe we've learned our lesson. Maybe we can be good." Then we went 6-2 in our first 8 games, and I thought, "HEY, I have serious hope now. Zorn is awsome." HAH! What a fool I was. We drafted a punter. And he's no longer on the team. And I'm still holding out hope on those 3 second round Recievers (one of them a Tight End, who this week btw finally caught pass, btw, and lemme tell ya he's a big dude and he cat skoot) all drafted in the second round, because Steve Smith only had 10 receptions his Rookie season, but jeez this draft looks like it has some real busts. I'm afraid now that we will suck until Snyder dies, or until Snyder wakes up and gives the reigns over to a real GM. And it will probably be a while before Snyder dies, because he was only in like elementary school when I watched the Redskins beat the Dolphins with Riggo's famous run in 1982 in my diaper at 2-almost-3 years old. And it will probably be a while before Snyder gets rid of Cerrato and gets a real GM and gives over control to him, because Snyder is a control freak, which I learned when I read THIS article.

Early that season, after a Redskins loss, Snyder told Nolan [as in Mike Nolan, a well respected NFL Defensive Coordinator] that his defensive calls were “too vanilla.” Like the other coaches, Nolan had figured out by then that trying to explain football to Snyder was pointless, since he already had the game figured out. A few days later a gallon of 31 Flavors ice cream showed up on Nolan’s desk with a note that said, “This is what I like. Not vanilla.”

Nolan laughed and sent Snyder a note: “Thanks for the ice cream. My kids enjoyed it.”
“The first time it was actually kind of funny,” Nolan said. “I didn’t mind it at all.”

The next time wasn’t as funny.

The Redskins lost on the road to Dallas, and Nolan went into his office late Sunday night to start looking at game tape. When he arrived, there were three giant canisters of melting 31 Flavors ice cream on his desk with another note: “I wasn’t joking. I do not like vanilla.”

THERE WAS A NEXT TIME!??!!

That there was a next time leads me to believe that there is no next time for the Redskins, not for a while. Unfortunately for me, as a Redskin fan. I am strongly considering handing in my fan card for quite a while, until the Vinny Snyderato thing changes.

OK. I'm done ranting and I feel better. Thanks for listening.

“Now notes of desperation have begun
to overtake my hearing; now I come
where mighty lamentation beats against me.
I reached a place where every light is muted,
which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest,
when it is battered by opposing winds.”
-from Dante’s Inferno, Cantos V

Interestingly I was in one of my uinversity's local bookstores buying books for the coming semester when I first heard about 9/11. I was watching live news footage on television soon after the second tower had been hit and before either tower fell. Realizing that the first was no accident by the time the second had hit, I saw that the events unfolding were the fulfillment of a script. To be honest, the first script I considered was The Odyssey. I would like to think that this is because the events match the referenced script so well, but as time goes on I think, in reality, this reaction of mine reflects a conflict in my soul. Over time, I have come to see tha tthe events of 9/11 also fulfill the Tower of Bable script quite well. Regardless, I can't point to one script or the other and say that the event fits one script and not the other. I feel, instead, that I must simply choose with my life.

Outside of the unbearable cries of lamentation that pierced to the center of my heart and had to be pushed to the underside of my world in order for me to get to class on time that day, my first thought was of the projectile that the Cyclopse violently hurled at Odyssius and his ships when, after the Cyclopse asked Odyssius what to tell his friends about his missing one eye, Odyssius replied, "Tell them Nobody did it." This oversized projectile was, of course, the two airplanes being "hurled" at the "vessels" containing the people of New York. In this scenario, the source of the force behind the projectile is monstrous (Cycloptic, surprisingly narrow minded :), the splash is explosive, and the reaction of those hit (Americans) is a reflection of the monster before their gaze. The examples of the irrational monstrosity fo our reaction are too numerious and obvious to recount, but some examples include: "God out and shop," "United we stand," and "We will fight [to no end, against an enemy with no face] for our freedom and a way of life."

In the Tower of Babel script, there is a kind of overwhelming monstrosity in the unfinished character of the Tower. We undertake a project to build and build and build to Nowhere under the weights of vanity and fear, and the veil fo blindness from the desires of our project is still not lifted when our Tower literally collapses due to a fireball from heaven. The unfinished character of the Tower at the end of the story is simply a reflection of the fear and vanity of Nimrod at the outset of the project. The script reads: "Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scatterd abroad the face of the whole earth." The task of assigning names to the animals was given to Adam, but once men sought to make a name for themselves (which was the basic fuel that ran the Greek polis, by the way), then suddenly they could no longer speak sensibly to each other.

So Nimrod's Tower we left unfinished, but in practical reality the continuing of our project - our inability to bring it to a halt in the face of two collapsing Towers - is the same as Nimrod's inability to continue. The preconditions of Nimrod's primal existance were those of stillness and slow motion that was all too close to absolute zero, of a death to be overcome, of a primitive terror at the very edge of an abyss. The backdrop of the stage set for the collapse of the World Trade Center is that of a well oiled and functioning machine whose parts and turnings not only engulf the field of vision of every member of the audience, but extend far beyond the limits of said field.

In Nimrod's world, one man's words in one place in the Tower being misunderstood by a man in another place in the Tower meant an unfinshed Tower. Our foundation, however, if it could be said that there is one, is not the Ground but not only an already completed Tower but an upside down one, so for us an unfinished Tower is the last thing that is meant by two people having a misunderstanding. You could even have the collapse of two of the tallest towers n the Tower followed by some of the workers crying out that the heads of the opponents in the conflict are in cohorts with each other to build their own personal private towers further up toward the heavens.

Concerning misunderstandings and misrecognitions, it is interesting that in the Homeric script, Odyssius and his men slip out of the Cyclopse' cave when each is mistaken for noe of the Cyclopse' own sheep. Where in the Hebraic script a primal Silence arises when one man in the Tower thinks the other is saying something he is not, in the Homeric script a sheep is mistaken for a man out of a monster's blindness. I think this has to do with a certain violence at the heart of the Homeric script; more on that in a moment.

There is another parallel scenario between the events of 9/11 and the Homeric script, as well. In my last scenario of uniting scripts with the events of 9/11, the airplane was the rock that the monster hurled at Nobody. In this scenario the airplane is the innocent sheep that Bin Laden uses to try and get his Home back. Just as "Nobody" suspects anything when there's an airplane flying through the air (gasp, surprise), nobody is surprised to find, (gasp, surprise), a group of (Arabic) passengers board boarding the darn thing. Of course, too, nobody suspects anything when the planes veer wildly off course, either.

And just as Odyssius and his men passed through the monster's "security check point" out in plain sight by appearing to said monster to be something totally normal and innocent, which in that case was one of the monster's very own sheep, the terrorists passed right through the mouth of the monster's cave as in order to climb aboard their weapon! Interestingly Odyssius and his men passed as sheep by climbing upon their belly. So, of course, "Nobody" expected anything until the weapon struck its large target in the eye at the top of the Tower. Then the monster goes berserk, and the guy looking for his home just smiles quietly and continues on his quest.

Of course, though, despite the quiet smile of Odyssius, the Cyclopse isn't the only one harboring violence. There is a great and decisive kind of violence in the act of striking the Cyclopse in his one eye with a burning ember, the kind of violence that causes an unchangeable change in your view of the world. Of course, where the planes are the projectiles hurled by the monster, there is also a certain notable violence in the act of the throw. There is a desire to extend something from a projected unreal part of your own being out into an undefined place that is perceived to be without limits.

The inversion of that extension of a kind of unreality into an open field might be to extend your being directly and possibly uninvited into the private world of another. This is the terrorist's desire to find his own death by actually blowing himself up onto everyone around him. This is the "shock value" of pornography. Economics is from the Greek word "oikos," meaning "house." The home is where the secret and sacred family rituals occur, many of them sexual. In Bin Laden's targeting of our economic system is a certain desire to kick us in the privates. So then of course our natural response as a large beuracracy is a set of trade restrictions on any country that is friendly to terrorists. Of course, a terrorist expects us to understand the passionate urge behind his kicking gesture, while we then in turn expect them to understand the language of our beurocratic "memo."

At times it seems as though the in many ways opposing scripts of the Tower of Babel and of Homer's Odyssey are inextricably interwoven into the events surrounding 9/11 (and many other events as well, of course). I think, however, that it is important to maintain a distinction between the two scripts. When I begin to follow with my mind and my life the Homeric script, I tend to walk my path with a certain kind of detachment, as if there really isn't much of a value of good or bad that could be assigned to my actions or to the events of the world. There is only my quest, and the events seem to primarily be recorded as a kind of simple neutral expression of sheer fact of the matter (of what and what kind of matter is a different discussion). As an artist, this simplicity is very attractive, and even at times, I think, important.

When it comes to the experience of most human beings in the world, however, I think that an even more primal voice in comparison to that simple and often detached existence of things and of myself might be found in the lamentations described by Danted in Cnato V of his Inferno, which I quoted at the beginning of this post. Where the pride of my intellect wants to speculatively contemplate being and becoming and the pride it takes to assume that man's being attains to the heights of the Tower required to be able to see it all occur in perspective, I think that Jesus is even more simply calling me to have sympathy with teh cries at the bottom of a falling tower, which I thought I had to ignore on that fated day of 9/11 in order to get to class on time. One redeeming aspect of the aftermath of 9/11 was how de-alienating it was.

The opening scene of Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev is a dream-like sequence in which a man is flying through the air over the terrain of his hometown in a hot air balloon. At some seemingly random point in time, the man simply comes crashing back to earth, with his balloon. The next mage in the montage is of a beautiful stallion, evidently in some kind of serious pain, struggling to slowly rise up from the earth to which the man had just crashed.