A Pilgrim’s Digression

Netflix reviews of the film Kontroll invariably make it sound like an action-adventure film, “…featuring nail-biting races in pursuit of crooks” and characters “all of whom are desperately racing against time and their surroundings to find one another.” I didn’t quite view the film in any of these ways.

While not as plotless and deeply philosophical as many European films, Kontroll is an odd mixture of comedy and mystery. In typical European fashion, the mystery is solved in a vague, inconclusive way, so really what makes this movie worth watching are the odd-ball characters and the comedic touches.

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The Wall Street Journal today has an op-ed by Debra Burlingame titled “Our Right to Security,” in which the author seeks to defend the USA Patriot Act, first by appealing to emotion (she describes one of the more horrific scenes of death from 9/11) and then by asserting that Americans have a fictitious “right” to security.

I am certainly used to Liberals finding rights where there are none explicitly provided by either God or the Constitution, but apparently Conservatives have their own erroneous list of entitlements.

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I have finally purchased my Video iPod. Back in October, when it was first released, I meant to buy one pretty much immediately. That didn’t happen. I sold one of my old iPods, but only received about a hundred dollars for it on eBay. I saved the money for awhile, but eventually frittered it away on stuff I can’t even remember at this point.

Occasionally, I thought about buying a new iPod, but I never did. Until yesterday.

A co-worker of mine received one for Christmas, and for the past several weeks he has been showing it off and asking me questions about it. He’s an iPod novice who is now thinking about making his next computer purchase a Mac.

When I saw the iPod in action, actually touched it and watched a video on it, I knew that resistance any longer was purely an exercise in futility. Yesterday, with three hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I bought one at Wal-Mart.

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For months now, I’ve been trying to hammer home the fact that in a war with no discernible end, it is dangerous to grant a President near-unlimited power in the prosecution of that war. Whether the President is trustworthy or not, by allowing him to take liberties with the Constitution we provide future Presidents with the perfect excuse to do the same.

We see that appeal to precedent today with our current President. He justifies his most controversial powers–the power to detain Americans and foreign fighters as “enemy combattants,” without granting any due process rights, or even POW status; the power to eavesdrop on communications that either originate or terminate within the United States–by reference to precedent.

My argument is that a President Hillary Clinton can now do exactly the same, and probably more when she is President.

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According to a brief CNN article I read today, the UCLA Alumni group I wrote about yesterday has dropped the reward for info on ‘radical’ professors. Instead, the group will now only accept donations of recordings of “radical” lectures by UCLA profs. The originator of the plan to expose radicalism on campus, Andrew Jones, said that the pay for lectures scheme had become a distraction from the real issue…which is exacting retribution on those professors who gave him bad grades, no doubt.

This article educated me on a couple more aspects of this case, and I pass that new information along as well. Apparently, this organization is not an official alumni organization of UCLA. It was only recently founded by Jones, who is 24, but it had some prominent alums who were members. Among them was a former Republican congressman, who resigned after Jones’ payment plan became public.

Also, it is not clear whether under school rules students would be allowed to distribute recordings of a professor’s lectures, gratuitously or not. A spokesman for the school, Lawrence Lokman said that school policy is that students must have the permission of the professor to distribute any notes or recordings of lectures.

This rule is probably meant to discourage students from doing what I witnessed as a University student: there was a blackmarket in notes, term papers, and tests–basically any thing that would give a prospective student of a professor a leg up. Even though my school had a policy against the practice, the blackmarket still existed.  Presumably there will be students at UCLA who will be willing to risk the consequences of getting caught in order to revenge themselves upon a professor they dislike.

Revenge is really what this issue comes down to, not “politicization.” A disliked professor will be the target of a campaign of entrapment. I can foresee disgruntled students provoking a political discussion in class, merely to record their professor’s “radical” beliefs for the benefit of the Sean Hannity Show listeners. I don’t know how my friends in academia feel, but I am so glad I no longer work in academia.

Citing a Reuter’s article of a few days ago (January 19), Rush Limbaugh reported yesterday on his program that the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association says it will pay students $100.00 for tape recordings of classroom lectures.

Lest you think some of these aging alums merely wish to refresh their knowledge and appreciation of Philosophy, English, or History by listening to the lectures of professors, let me set you straight: according to the website, their mission is to “[expose] the most radical professors” in the school.

By “radical,” they of course mean Liberal.

The website for the association also includes a page on which one can read profiles of those professors the organization considers the most radical, called the “Dirty Thirty.” I rarely use such terms as “Nazi” or “McCarthy-like,” but I have to say, this “Dirty Thirty” list of names amply earns the appellative McCarthy-like.

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A few months ago, I bought an Apple iSight camera thinking I could use it to better keep in touch with my best friend.

I think we used it for chatting maybe three times. Now it sits on the bookshelf, unused. It’s future is in fact threatened by my occasional eBay selling binges.

But then, while just now looking for the proper way to mix the perfect white russian, I came across a blog post about a new service called iChatnaked.com. Now, I am not suddenly going to start using my webcam again, certainly not for this purpose, but I’m thinking about how ingenious a person must be to come up with an idea like this.

There is nothing stopping iSight owners from chatting naked, whenever they feel like it, but there is no guarantee that their partner will reciprocate. Certainly I cannot envision me and my best friend chatting naked at the computer. That’s just a little icky…so let’s get that image right out of our head.

Other people, however, may want to be assured that if they take their clothes off, the person on the other end of the iSight will take theirs off, too. So here is a service that guarantees you some thrills for the hundred bucks you pay for an iSight. And someone is no doubt making big bucks off this service.

Yesterday in Washington, the big story was the Roe v. Wade anniversary and the resulting protest march here in the District. I have seen this protest every year for four years now, but this time I was especially struck by how many young people participated.

A coworker and I were discussing it this morning, and we could not reach a conclusion about whether there were more young people than last year or the year before. We both had some questions, however.
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In the past three or four weeks, I’ve come to know three new people, and the experience has taxed the limits of my sociability. Two of the three people are married and so only count as one person, yet still, I feel exhausted, as if I’ve been doing the talk show circuit. I’ve dredged up worn, old anecdotes about my past, had to recall to mind the subject of my Master’s Thesis and then talk unintelligently on it for five minutes as if I were re-presenting my oral defense, and I even essayed a bit of humor at times.

To make matters worse, the married couple I’ve come to know are a Baptist minister and his wife. Feelings of inadequacy pile upon guilt and despair. (more…)

Even the President of the United States / Sometimes must stand naked.
–Bob Dylan, “It’s alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)”

Most words associated with the human body and its excresences have a certain disgusting texture on the tongue. Snot. Wart. Puss. Hair. Pimple. Shit and piss. Callous. Corn. Ingrown toenail. Abscess. Mole.

Our bodies are a wrinkled, bulbous mass of growths and discolorations, fungal and bacterial infections, and pustules leaking emulsions of viscous, rank goo. Sometimes I wonder how we ever bear to remove our clothing in front of each other. If it weren’t for lust and the resulting chemical reactions that cloud our vision in those moments of so-called “passion,” I suspect the earth would be much less densely populated with the results of one gloppy fluid meeting one microscopic blob in the womb.
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