Digital Alterity

Talking Head: Statistics show that more Americans than ever are now obese. Childhood diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related ailments are in the news almost every day. Traditional weight loss requires diet and exercise, but what if you could easily and safely loses weight by thinking happier thoughts? That’s the premise of an exciting new book from BigPub Corporation, entitled Weight Off Your Back. Joining us tonight we have the author of that book, health professional Ronald King.

Vapid Idiot: Hi, TH. Glad to be on the program.

Talking Head: In addition, we have Dr. Wayne Parker, respected scientist at the world-renowned Peer-Reviewed Research Institution.

Respected Scientist: Good to be with you.

Talking Head: Ronald, why are Americans becoming so fat?

Vapid Idiot: Well, TH, if I could boil it down to one cause, it would have to be all the negative energy we take in by thinking depressing thoughts. Those negative thoughts make us hold on to all the fat in the food we consume, making us fat. In previous generations, the world was a much happier and safer place, so we were able to eat even fatty, homestyle food without getting fat.

Talking Head: Interesting. Dr. Parker, you response?

Respected Scientist: I’m really astounded by Mr. King’s claims. There is a strong correlation between a high-calorie, low-activity lifestyle and increased body mass. We have a lot of excellent, peer-reviewed experiments that indicate that the only way to lose weight is to increase your physical activity, decrease your calorie consumption, and generally take in fewer calories than you burn with exercise. There’s no credible argument to the contrary in the health community.

Talking Head: Ronald, it seems like your book has the scientific community in something of an uproar.

Respected Scientist: Not surprising, TH. The information in my new book really turns a lot of the “old thinking” on its head. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a painful exercise. My methods provide a safe, easy alternative to traditional starvation-based dieting.

Talking Head: Well, it seems like this is one debate that’s going to be raging for sometime! Again, that new book is Weight Off Your Back by Ronald King, available in bookstores everywhere.

So, I’ve spent most of the afternoon drinking Diet Coke. This is hardly unusual for me, and it’s really not the crux of my post but rather the subtle event that leads toward rising narrative action and an eventual literary climax. In any event, because biology works, all this beverage necessitated a trip to the restroom. Again, hardly newsworthy stuff here.

Upon arriving in the second floor bathroom, I discovered a scene of pure Lovecraftian horror. Someone, in an apparent fear of pestilence, had unleashed some sort of unholy bathroom ritual involving yards of toilet paper draped across the toilet set in a roughly circular fashion and a conspicuously unflushed toilet. I’m pretty sure they were trying to summon dark elder gods or some such. The horror took ten years off my life.

I’ve never understood people who live in this terrible, debilitating fear of catching diseases. This admission is not a request for attempted explanations for such behavior because, frankly, I’ve already thrown all those who worry about such things squarely into the “summarily worthless” bin. Nonetheless, I can’t help but ponder the strange dementia that leads to such behavior. I mean, if you’re that concerned about the horrible germs on the toilet seat, maybe using a public toilet just isn’t for you. If you’re too terrified to actually sit down on a toilet sit and then pull the lever to flush when you’re finished, either go home to poo or go buy some adult diapers.

The truly sad thing is that someone is going to have to clean up the results of this mental malfunction.

One of my favorite things about living in a university town is the progressive attitude that the community as a whole takes toward social issues. I don’t necessarily mean “progressive” in the same sense that a lot of Democrats are using the term, though that usage may have some degree of overlap with my meaning. University towns like Gainesville always feel like we’re at the forefront of society’s relentless march toward the future with very little sentimentality to hold the community back. This isn’t to say that there aren’t nostalgic/conservative voices to be found in the municipal discourse, but frankly, such views rarely occur in sufficient frequency — or perhaps more accurately, volume — to really retard the overall sprint toward what’s coming down the pipeline.

In Gainesville, unlike most of the surrounding rural areas, homosexuality isn’t a scarlet letter of shame. Gay folks are accepted here, and in all honesty, I think most of us have a hard time even understanding why someone would even think to discriminate against a gay couple. In Gainesville, technology is embraced rapidly and without reservation, leading to some really interesting and unique approaches to narrative, social interaction, and productivity. In comparison, other locales often seem unnaturally slow or disconnected. Here, global warming is understood as a scientific reality and not a talking point to be debated. As a result, our elected leaders have made us one of the few US cities that have committed to implementing the Kyoto protocol.

Now, of course I’m simplifying matters to an alarming degree for narrative effect. Many of the rural people that commute to Gainesville to work are more in line with the rest of the country when it comes to an ideal vision of the world, but the overall point I think is a fair one. The net effect is that Gainesville feels quite different from nearly everywhere else around us. Taking trips to other cities and towns in Florida often feels like traveling to a foreign country with distinct values and mores and returning home always feels like something of a grand comforting homecoming.

In Gainesville, it’s normal to weird and weird to be normal, and on some level, I think that’s why I have yet to leave. I can easily picture myself moving somewhere else, but in my Walter-Mitty daydreams it’s always to a place that’s more cosmopolitan, even more accepting, and even closer to the dream of what the future could be. It’s precisely the sort of thing that’s hard to quantify about a place, but I’ve come to realize that it’s absolutely critical to my sense of happiness and my emotional wellbeing.

Technorati Tags: Gainesville, Florida, progress, progressive

At exactly what point in our history did it become kosher to print a story with a headline that centers around an unconfirmed allegation? The last presidential election was particularly full of such nonsense. Now, I’m no journalist, but it seems to me that if you don’t have any corroborating facts or confirmation from a second independent source, there’s no story. Merely publishing what one partisan accuses other partisan cheapens the press and merely makes them the conduit for elementary school “he-said-she-said” arguments.

Valid Headlines (With Independent Validation of Facts)

• Councilman Bratwurst Accepts Controversial Donation
• Anomalies Found In Candidate’s War Record
• Republicans Vote Down Medicare Bill

He-Said-She-Said Headlines

• Councilman Keilbasa Accuses Bratwurst Of Accepting Dirty Money
• Veterans Group Alleges War Record Cover-Up
• President Tunahead: Republicans ‘Hate Poor People’

If you can’t find independent confirmation, then your source is either a partisan, a crank, or both.

Technorati Tags: Media, Press, Journalism

I’ve known lots of people who were madly in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They recorded every episode, which they then watched, re-watched, and passionately discussed with friends. When people hear that I love vampires, feminism, and comic books, they assume that I’m totally into Buffy. This leads to the uncomfortable discussion about how I’ve never watched an episode.

“But it’s so good!”
“The movie was so cheesy and campy though.”
“The TV show is completely different. Hollywood screwed up Joss Whedon’s idea.”

I never got around to watching it though. I’m like that. Watching popular TV shows really messes up your punk rock street cred. I saw clips of it as I scanned through channels, and I wasn’t impressed enough to stop. Buffy was not part of my world. When I thought of vampires, I though of Anne Rice.

I became aware of Joss Whedon as a writer for two reasons. First, after years of ignoring adoring praise for Firefly from the Slashdot and Fark crowd, I went and saw Serenity. And I subsequently went and watched it again the very next weekend. I loved the movie so much that I started recording Firefly on the DVR. Then, when I got back into comics last year, I really dug Whedon’s work on Astonishing X-Men. Whedon’s dialogue was like a character unto itself, providing even the darkest of plots with a lightness that made turning the page enjoyable.

Once I become aware of a writer, I tend to systematically devour all of their work and dote on them with a fanboy-like devotion. As such, it’s somewhat inevitable that I would eventually make my way into the Buffyverse. In fact, it’s only my hetero man-crushes on Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker that have delayed it for this long. Last week, prompted further by a recent Buffy episode of Comic Geek Speak, I got impatient with my Smallville DVD from Netflix and downloaded the first episode of Buffy from iTunes. I watched it during my lunch break and then, due to the cliffhanger, subsequently found and watched an illicit copy of the next episode on the Internet. I was immediately and irrevocably hooked.

Over the weekend, I discovered that Best Buy’s online store had all the seasons of Buffy on sale for sixteen dollars a piece. After determining that they didn’t have the same price going in the store, I ordered the first two seasons for in-store pick-up down in Fort Myers (since we were visiting Jason). I’ve watched the first three episodes at this point, and I love this show nearly as much as grande soy lattes from Starbucks. I love the message of female empowerment and feminism, and I’m a sucker for superheroes of nearly any type. Furthermore, Whedon’s dialogue makes me swoon. I’m trying to hold out to watch the episodes together with Allyson, but my resolve is weakening to the point where I might need to rip some episodes to my iPod so that I can watch them during my lunch break.

The truly interesting part about my sudden love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that it isn’t really a unique situation. Nearly everyone I’ve met who has a fanatical interest in the show started out hating the idea of the show, only to be won over in a Damascus Road experience after watching one episode. The writing is absolutely top notch. The characters are dynamic, witty, and interesting. The portrayals of women and other social minorities are refreshingly positive. The show is damned good. I publicly admit that I was wrong about this show.

Technorati Tags: Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampires, Television, Joss Whedon

The world is only binary because that’s the structure our logic and our language enforces on a diverse and often chaotic reality. Human beings are able to process increasingly complex logical problems in the span of seconds that would require several months of computer programming to even set the decision tree possibilities if using a digital computer precisely because of this ability to simplify complex data sets into a less precise and less accurate summary. Unfortunately, imposing such a structure becomes such second nature that we often simplify areas that resist simplification. This leads to the problem of stereotypes.

The simplification of a complex whole is a form of linguistic and logical violence. Simplification requires building a definition (usually a dichotomy) that captures the information that fits within the top of the statistical bell curve. Such a definition requires cutting away the fringes by using phrases like “for the most part” or “generally”. In essence, in our urge to provide simple and easily handled definitions, we are building a class definition around an often non-existent ideal or paragon. The problem, however, doesn’t come in when we’re dealing with a very abstract or academic discussion of language. Rather, true difficulties only arise when we begin to take those simplified definitions out into the often chaotic data distribution of real life. Our structure now becomes an ideological prison that keeps us in classification rather than observation mode. Rather than adapting our definition based on new data as a true scientist must, we become excluding or shaming of all who don’t fit our reference. A feminist like me sees this problem most readily in issues surrounding gender. Likewise my muslim friend is very likely to see the problem in light of our Western religious structures. A homosexual often sees the problem as it involves sexual orientation. All of these are great examples that can illustrate the fundamental problem of turning a complex whole into an easily (mis)handled object.

When we define in increasing detail what it means to be a woman or a man, we describe an ideal with criteria that will eventually exclude nearly every actual member of that class. No one will ever completely fit the stereotype, and this leads to an internal shame. The problem in reality isn’t being a hairy woman or a guy who likes musicals. The problem is that the class definition excludes you from truly belonging to that group. In object-oriented terms, you are not a flawed instantiation of a perfect class. The “bug” is in the class description itself. Each of us is queer when compared with an unrealistic ideal.

Technorati Tags: Critical Theory, Feminism, Queer, Object-oriented, Class, Ideals, Language

I’ve always preferred the company of girls to that of men. To be honest, I’ve never really felt any particular kinship with other dudes. When I was a small boy, I slept in my sister’s bedroom because my brother scared the shit out of me. I played games with my sister, or I played quietly by myself. My imaginary friend, Misty Codge, was a girl, and I wanted sneakers just like hers. When my sister had sleepovers, I hung out with her friends all night. Girls, I always knew, were way better.

When I went to school, I quickly learned about gender separation, something I had never experienced before. It seemed really weird to me in kindergarten that the boys played with other boys and girls played with other girls. The boys played stupid physical games that got them dirty. I, on the other hand, refused to get dirty. The girls were unwilling to hang out with me because then they would get teased about me being their boyfriend, an utter absurdity amongst five year olds. I promptly formed my own playground club and invited boys and girls along.

Of course, school being ultimately a place of enforced conformity, I couldn’t keep convincing my peers to ignore gender groups, and this led to my realization that in order to hang out with girls you had to be girlfriend and boyfriend. The next week, I had three girlfriends. Simultaneously. Of course these little playground romances were nothing more than modified games of pretend, and the girls would just go right back to playing with the other girls when bored with the game.

And it wasn’t just school. As I grew up, gender groups started getting enforced everywhere. I remember keenly one day when Mom was having a bridal shower at our house for one of the girls in our church. I helped my sister and her decorate and clean up the house, but when the guests started arriving, my mom sat me down and explained that boys weren’t allowed to attend bridal showers and that I would have to play in my room when the ladies arrived. I remember feeling so betrayed and so wronged. I felt excluded, and I hated it. I remember crying quietly in my room because none of it made any sense to me.

In high school, I was the sensitive geeky guy that all the nice honors-class girls went to when their boyfriends were acting like assholes (which happened on an almost weekly basis). I helped girls by being their friend in times of trouble. I joked with them and made them laugh with graphic stories in which their ex-boyfriends were horribly mutilated for being stupid enough to dump such wonderful human beings. Once or twice, I got romantically interested in one or two of these friends, but that tended to end poorly. By and large, though, I was the safe guy, the guy you talked to and joked with. This is the only part of high school that I enjoyed, and I’m happy to say that this continued throughout most of college and led right into me dating and marrying one of my best friends in the world.

The truth of the matter is, though, that life feels like it has separated again. It may or may not be true of course, but perception is reality in such matters. My female friends are married or dating, and, you know, I’m happy for them. But my little selfish inner five-year-old sometimes feels like I’m being locked out of the bridal shower all over again. When we meet up with married friends, I’m expected to talk with the husband even though it makes me feel even more uncomfortable than most social situations do already. On a very primal and emotional level, I miss my female friends, and I hate being categorized with all the other men.

Being a feminist, I hate myself for this. I understand the concept of protected spaces. I understand that all minorities — even the ones that I belong to — need safe places. I understand that I’m not allowed in unless I’m specifically invited. I don’t want to be a man who’s just trying to colonize a proctected female space. But I still feel that terrible feeling that five-year-old Rusty first felt on the playground. I miss being Rusty, the harmless guy who was one of the girls. And I feel defeated by the When-Harry-Met-Sally veil that separates me from where I’ve always felt happiest and most comfortable.

Technorati Tags: Women, Feminism, Gender, Friendship, Melancholy

I am almost completely in love with really old Wonder Woman comics. They fill my ironic little feminist heart with a bizarre sort of glee. They make me smirk.

I have the good fortune to be reading through Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told courtesy of my local public library. The really old Wonder Woman comics by Charles Moulton are the most innocently kinky things I have ever read. By innocently kinky, I mean that you could conceivably read them without seeing some bizarre sexual kink writ large—but not by someone like me. In those early issues, everyone is getting bound up and compelled to do things. It really is like some kind of BDSM fantasy.

Take, for example, how the Amazons deal with their prisoners:

I especially love the feminist subtext played with by having the conduit of submissive bondage being a girdle. That is about as effing perfect as you can get. Especially when paired with this panel later on in the same storyline:

Remember, kids: When women get too uppity, they get bound into loving submission by a strong master! And they don’t just like it…They love it.

Technorati Tags: Feminism, Comics, Wonder Woman, DC, Comic Books, Submission, BDSM, Humor

I’m a very tolerant person. One of the descriptions that people always seem to apply to me after they’ve met me is “easy-going”. I ardently believe what I believe, but as long as someone isn’t hurting anyone else, I have no objection to other people having completely different beliefs. Some fundamentalist Christians perceive this as a character flaw or a dereliction of my duty as a born-again Christian, but frankly, this is a central part of my beliefs. I’m not “backsliding”. “The world” didn’t pollute me with its “new age” thinking. This is how I have always believed. As with many things, I could find passages of the Bible to back up this belief, but that would be a pointless exercise since my faith is internally driven. I decide how I believe, not the Bible or any other external source. Tolerance and unconditional acceptance are a central part of my ethos and a key component to any deity or moral framework that I would serve.

I’ve certainly not always succeeded in implementing my ideals. I can be intolerant. I have been rude to people who believe differently than I do. I have lashed out in anger at others who attempt to implement their own beliefs because I have felt judged when they almost certainly meant no judgment. However, these actions are contrary to my internal moral compass, and I am convicted by them in the quiet moments when I am alone with myself. I certainly fail to meet my ideals at times, but I do my utmost to use those failures as further motivation to atone and to bring my actions closer in line with the desires of my heart.

I admit readily, however, that my tolerance has a limit. I do not tolerate the harming of others. No matter what your beliefs, if you feel motivated by your morals to do something to the detriment of others, you have crossed an unacceptable line, and I will stand up to you. I will do my utmost to draw your hatred away from your intended target. My ethos requires me to stand up for the weak and the persecuted, and frankly, it is a job that I enjoy. In these moments, I become less like Christ or Buddha and more like Spider-Man or Great Teacher Onizuka, and the world has a clarity of purpose that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something good. I’m thankful for the beauty of such moments.

There is too much intolerance on the news these days. It has been so for most of my life, but what used to be an undercurrent is quickly becoming a bubbling, whitewater rapid of prejudice. Don’t believe me? Did you hear about the Operation Save America activists disrupting the Hindu prayer in the Senate? How about the Pope’s recent statement that Protestant churches aren’t and cannot be true churches? It’s not purely a religious intolerance either. When was the last time you saw a debate between “liberals” and “conservatives” that didn’t end up resembling an elementary school shouting match? Having grown up in a staunchly evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist background, I can readily appreciate the motivation behind such actions. The people involved genuinely care about the wellbeing of those who disagree with them. In fact, they see such things as absolutely critical. If they don’t set you right, they fear, you (and possibly they for not attempting to set you straight) will face eternal consequences.

The dilemma, of course, is that such intolerance is never in the best interest of the spread of your ideals. The aphorism about flies and honey is actually quite applicable. From a more rational, debate-centered perspective, you can never truly persuade anyone until you intimately understand their true motivations for their beliefs and actions. Intolerance centers around the notion that your way is the only acceptable way of seeing things, and acting on that notion closes off the possibility of future discourse. If you truly seek to save sinners or enlighten your liberal co-workers, you really should start by truly understanding why they believe what they believe. In the real world, people aren’t motivated by demons tempting them into Satan’s will or by an ardent desire to build a totalitarian state. Every person you encounter is doing their utmost to bring about a better world. They just differ from you on the implementation details.

Even more importantly, I would implore each of us to follow the advice of Zen master Zengetsu, who advised “Censure yourself, never another.” I would implore each of us to follow the advice of Jesus who taught “Judge not lest ye also be judged.” When we act in a way that harms others or spreads judgment, we work to turn our world into a present form of hell. When we act with a spirit of mindfulness and genuine love, we help bring about the salvation and the enlightenment of all around us. This truth, like many others, are hinted at in many of the world’s religions, moral frameworks, and laws. Truth is wordless and unconstrained by human understanding. I began the path to enlightenment praying the sinner’s prayer with my father on our living room couch. Allyson began her path to enlightenment with a quiet revelation of God in a Catholic mass. Jen(na) found her next steps toward enlightenment in the ancient wisdom Qur’an. We are all stumbling toward the truth, and it’s only when we’re build up those around us that we come any closer to touching it.

Technorati Tags: Religion, Tolerance, Intolerance, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Zen, Wisdom, Truth

I’m somewhat (and rather purposefully) removed from the mainstream. I only watch TV shows via DVDs from Netflix. I get all of my news from Internet sites like Reddit, and honestly I spend more time on highly specific sites about politics, comic books, and food than I spend actually gathering general audience news. Occasionally a massive story like this Paris Hilton nonsense will crack through my shell of non-awareness, but for the most part, I am slavishly devoted to my obsessions and blissfully unaware of most of humanity. This is why you people think that I’m so productive.

When I am confronted by surveys of public opinion or news stories about public outrage, I’m often left profoundly confused. As I become more and more removed from popular culture and social society, some shared societal beliefs just don’t seem like big deals to me anymore. I’m getting exposed to way more of such things in my current secretarial job because, in four years working as a computer programmer, I had been working only with alpha geeks who had pretty similar social values and mores. These days, I often come home and tell Allyson with disbelief in my voice the things that people think and believe. This of course isn’t really news to her because she continues to live in the general public.

In an effort to talk more about me and my solitary genius/depravity, I hereby present a list of things that make little sense to me.

Separate sex bathrooms. I have completely lost any sense of why we have sex-specific bathrooms in public places. At home, we all use shared toilet facilities, and we all know the physical differences between males and females. I no longer have any perspective on why this is such a big deal. People think nothing of taking their kids into the bathroom with whatever parent is most convenient. Why not just have the grownups share toilet facilities as well?

The American nakedness taboo. Why are Americans so uptight about the naked body? We think nothing of portraying violence and death on TV shows. Heck, we even have people with guns in cartoons for children. I don’t get the big deal in showing realistic portrayals of the parts that human beings all have. I’m not talking about graphic shots of people fornicating here, folks. I just don’t understand why it’s a big deal to see a woman’s breast or a man’s penis. It’s time to drop the effing cultural fig leaves.

Why Americans only vote for Democrats or Republicans. The American public is pretty sick of this whole Iraq war thing. In 2006, they voted a whole bunch of Democrats into Congress to try to get out of/fix the Iraq nightmare. What happened next is hardly surprising to those of us to tend to support third parties. The Democrats promptly rolled over and further funded the war against the wishes of the populace that elected them. They did it because they know that Americans will vote for them in 2008 anyway. After all, the only choices are either them or the Republicans.

Repulsion toward gay people. As many of you know, I’m a vegan. Since I stopped eating meat and animal products, the idea of eating meat is personally disgusting to me. I would genuinely have trouble swallowing if meat somehow made its way into my mouth. Nonetheless, when someone who does eat meat tells me about a non-vegan meal that they genuinely enjoyed, I don’t suddenly act disgusted and tell people how repulsed I feel thinking of eating such a meal. Nonetheless, this is exactly how a large number of people act when some talks about being homosexual. Why on earth is it so vexing to see two dudes or two chicks (gasp) holding hands or hugging in public?

Truth be told I don’t even understand anymore why being gay is such a big deal to people. We as a species are having no problems reproducing enough to increase our numbers. Gay people aren’t telling you that you’re not allowed to have and enjoy heterosexual sex. I completely fail to see why anyone even cares. Even if your religious beliefs consider homosexuality to be a sin, why would you care about homosexuals any more than, say, people who wear cotton/synthetic blends (Leviticus 19:19)?

Why people must be solely identified with their career. I’ve come to hate the question “What do you do?” I think this is, in part, because for the first part of my life, this question never actually came up. In small rural towns, it’s not uncommon for someone to have a job and then do something they’re truly passionate about in their spare time. I grew up around guys who worked in a prison or farmed but made cabinets or worked on cars on the side. I “do” pretty much whatever I want. I write. I draw. I read comic books. I play video games. Each of these things has far more to do with my identity than what I choose to do for money forty hours per week. I understand and appreciate that some people actually do get paid to do something they’re passionate about. I’m not there yet, and frankly, I might never be there. The comics I want to create right now seem to be more arty than superhero. The articles I write don’t seem to have much of an audience. I don’t intend to let lack of economic incentive stop me from doing what I love.