All the Hooey Here in Whoville

Two weeks ago, I started watching the Dr. Who Series 3, which Netflix has been sending me in the mail; I finished watching last night. All the multi part episodes made it hard to swallow in small bites. The temptation to slurp it down in large gulps was too strong. So while the Christmas episode will be running on BBC any day, kicking off Series 4 for Americans able to stream it through the web, I’ll be Who-less for another year.

It was another good season.

Let’s look at the things that are key to the considerations of this blog (or at least were when I started it): cyborgs and the post-human. I wanted to hug the producers with almost every episode for at least taking these considerations seriously. Let me repeat my first principles: that cyborgism speaks to human relatedness, that cyborgism is proximate and contingent, that it is symbol of strength, and that it stands in contrast to the "back to Eden" myth of essential humanism. On all of these issues, the TV show took the safe, easy route of preferring essentialised humanism to Cyborg relatedness. (Even the Doctor’s relation to the TARDIS is occassionally presented as questionable, though that was more true in Series 1 when it made Billie Piper a Goddess for a brief period).

Throughout the run of Dr. Who, there’s been a recurring theme in the use of the Daleks wherein the Daleks represent Superego and Dr. Who – somewhat uncomfortably– is the spokesguy for the Id. Part of this seems to be a basic conundrum of the problems of creating bad guys. You can imagine the conversation around the writer’s table:

"I don’t get it. Why do these metal R2D2 thingies want to exterminate humankind?"
"Um–because humans are weak?"

Doesn’t make sense unless the metal thingies are complete anal retentive freaks. That makes the Doctor kind of a world hopping inter-species head shrink trying to free the libido. "Tell me again how you feel about your smelting pot."

Regardless of whether it makes sense, the newer series have played with the idea of the Doctor as being whipped through the world by an out of control Id that he himself barely understands. Consider the maniacal grin he flashes whenever he offers his female a sidekick a trip to the wildside of time. In the Tom Baker days (as I remember it) he was kind of intergalactic fix-it man. That still seems to be how he sees himself, but most of the things he fixes turn out to have been caused by him careening through time like an out of control Ariel.

I'm down with that; self-delusion among the over educated is something I have, eh, witnessed from time to time.

The two episodes which did the most with the "Doctor" persona were the "family of blood" episodes (two parts) which show him having trapped himself in the early 20th century without his memory, to avoid a family which is chasing him. As the human version of the Doctor realizes who he really is, he starts to weep, asking "what kind of man is this Doctor?" Just barely glimpsed is a very humanist interrogation of the doctor as someone who has repressed his own Id (the human professor has fallen in love) and therefore is whipped erratically by the principle of the return of the repressed.

Be that as it may, he plot forces him to become his true self: from the terms of his alter ego, this is a tragedy (because he has lost touch with human scaled human values, such as the possibility of a stable loving relationship). From the terms of the series, it is comedy because OUR doctor, the Peter Pan who won’t grow up even though he is hundreds of years old, has been restored.
This IS a post human identity: contingent, proximate (which is to say, in no way an ideal version of the human self).

What the family does, though, the Master undoes.

The last three episodes, in which the Doctor catches up with the Master where he has been exiled as the Professor at the end of time were far and away the best episodes of the third series. Let’s take it from the top: The "Professor" the Doctor first meets (his memory has been erased through the same mechanism the Doctor used to temporarily erase his own) is a LOT like the Doctor of the 60's and 70's: an older, futzy professor with a bright, adoring companion (of a very foreign species).

In earlier decades, the "Master" was indicated by a dark goatee. I like the fact that when he regenerates himself he turns into...Tony Blair (or an actor playing a character designed to resemble Tony Blair). That is to say, he turns into a politician who has been constructed by an evil genius to be appear to be all things to all people. Good! He turns the Doctor into an old man; painful, but good.

Then, at the end of a year, with Martha (who escaped a year earlier) watching on the telly, he turns the Doctor into Yoda.

I wish I were making that up.

Then it turns out that Martha Jones has been spending a year walking the earth to get the whole human race to pray to or for the Doctor at the same precise moment–which they do–which (Holy Mother...) regenerates him.

Can you say Deus Ex Machina? "Day-uus–ecks mack–un–ah"

Still, it’s sci-fi, we can allow for Deus like machinations from time to time. And I mean, just because he gets all glowy doesn’t mean he’s "literally" (as my students might say) a figure of Christ.

Of course, when he wrestles foe to the ground and says "I forgive you" it sort of does.
No wonder the old sot doesn’t regenerate himself when his blonde squeeze shoots him.

Even so, even if it’s the weakest part, that’s not the most interesting thing about this episode. No, the most interesting thing is the appearance the nasty little metal spheres the Master has created. There are something like 3 billion of these he drops on the earth, and they go beyond the usual kind of "heartless metal evil" devices. These devices are snide, occasionally stupid, and downright offensive. Why? Because each one them contains the remains of a human rescued from the end of time.

Again, it’s the show’s absolute humanist perspective which cannot allow, not even for a second, that human consciousness could adapt to this new way of being which is grotesque on the face of it? Why not? Because it’s grotesque on the face of it! It’s like a person being confined to a wheelchair, or only being able to communicate with his eyelids: just plain gross, and anyone who would live that way must be evil.

It’s interesting exactly because the character at the center is himself cyborgian, defined by his relationship to his living TARDIS, dependent for emotional support on intense relationships with beings from another species.

Even though I don’t like the direction they are thinking, I DO like the fact that show is thinking.

With Apologies to NPR...

This I Believe.

I believe in proportion, one scoop of coffee to two cups of water,
And that coffee is better at waking you up than alcohol is at relaxing you,
And that either can rob you of a good night's sleep.

I believe in turning problems over to God,
Even though I doubt he exists, and
That He will help me, although
He has the same doubts about me.

I believe that running uphill is good training for running uphill,
And something very similar about running hard on quarter mile tracks.

You can probably guess what I believe about lifting heavy objects in the gym.

I believe that people who say they believe that money can't buy happiness
Should subject that belief to an honest test;
Send me your money and let me try, while your try without it;
Let's see who has more success.

I am willing to set up a special research account for this purpose.

I believe that this is a good time to buy telecom stocks, but I no longer believe
That Cisco will make me rich.

(Back to the money/happiness thing: For the right sum,
I am even willing to write the results up
For submission to a peer reviewed journal, which, believe me,
Is a lot of work.)

I believe that true love is worth the wait, unless you happen to be waiting,
In which case the temptation to lie to yourself is irresistable;
Then heaven help you both.

I believe in the Now, in Life on Life's Terms, in Just for Today
Though last week, when I wasn't sleeping well (too much caffeine, I think)
These beliefs were impossible.

I believe that for a list poem to be of any value, it has to go on a little bit too long.

I believe that I may not know what my most important beliefs are until I stop believing them,
After which I'll be too despondent, enlightened, or dead to accept that they matter.

But I believe in belief: the clear ice
Of my teenaged certitude that doubt
Was the answer, the only answer to the industrial cement walls
Of God, Religion, War;
That this shifting iceberg would be my fundament
For questioning everything and
Eventually, indeed, itself.

House of Dreams

This is a construction site I pass every day on my way into work (that's the front of my car at the bottom of the image). The man has been working on it for more than a year. For a while it was just a foundation. Than a bare frame. Then he added the roof. For the past week, I've had a few rough lines from a poem in my head as I pass. The last line was an accident. Precious, but I'm keeping it.

House of Dreams

Scratching dreams into the into the land is vexatious.

The music of saws, the percussion of thoom against thwang,

Such a paltry symphony against the motor roar,

The deeper room, room, room that delights in undermining

These matchstick bulwarks.

We've seen what happens to homes around here.
The farm house between the pecan trees
Replaced by a triple wide.
The white cottage beneath the huge old willow,
(Out near where Bonnie lives)
Left unpainted for one year too many, bulldozed under the next,
The grave markers behind left standing,
A choir without a church.

And that house behind the kudzu with the old man still in it--
Don't get me started on that.

Sit a moment, Marlboro in hand,
Straw hat against the sun; makeThe workman's scowl, consider
The plum line, the toothless smile of
The empty facade, the deep furrows, still raw
Though dug into the earth a decade earlier.
Then cut a board, nail a shingle, carry a brick.

I, too, have dreams I can't fulfill or abandon,
That demand the intimate service of hand crafting,
And though you hide it, I see,
As you pack up early, your joy
Knowing it still needs a little more work.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and the Post-Human

A recent article in Newsday by Wallace Matthews is typical of how the press is treating Barry Bonds. "Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, forever linked by a single word. Cheater."

This despite the fact that they are accused of using steroids were steroids were not banned by baseball. Ergo, though they may be liars, they were not cheaters. Why has there been such a rush to condemn?

Had he said "Bonehead," I might have agreed with him, since neither man has a reputation for being congenial.

I want to try for some perspective here. First, I take it as a fact of history that both men, and most of the great athletes of their times, used steroids. I also think it is pretty clear that if neither man had ever used them, they would have still been among the greatest players in the game, since they were both established greats at the time that they are accused of using steroids. What we have are athletes facing the downward tail of their peak years, trying to extend their peak productivity.

Is not that what a professional athlete is supposed to do? But never mind that, that's not really what I'm trying to get at. Let me circle around and come back...

When Tommy John, the pitcher for whom a certain kind of reconstructive surgery is now named, was facing the end of his career, he used to joke, "My arm is only three (five, seven) years old." My point is that he had access to developments in modern medicine, and took full use of them to extend his career. It is not seen as the same thing, because he faced coming back from an injury; but most accounts have it that Bonds (and Andy Petite) both used performance enhancers as a way of getting back after an injury. Where then the meaningful difference?

But I'm still not getting where I want to go. I need to dig back further. Much further.

The history of Baseball is the history of American Modernism. Some accounts have it beginning during the civil war (the war that introduced gas warfare and war dead photos), but it achieves its popularity in the 1880's. Despite the pastoral imagery that is always associated with it ("ducks on a pond" "elysian fields," etc.) it is eminently an urban game--witness the homes of the original franchises (Boston, Chicago, Cincinatti, New York, etc). My point is that from the start, it is about both urban growth and the pastoral, the way parks in general are. Let me push this a little further: baseball is game about ambivalence towards the future and manufactured dreams of the past.

What do I mean? This: When Babe Ruth revolutionized the game, he was widely chided. A Newspaper editorialized that by swinging for home runs, he would sacrifice his batting average. Ty Cobb, who well into the Ruth era was considered the best player in baseball, for two days in a row made a conscious effort to his for home runs--successfully--then went back to his high avwerage style, to prove that he could hit for power, but chose not to.

Ring Lardner, who wrote what some consider the best baseball novel every, "You know me, Al," thought that Ruth had ruined baseball, and that he, Lardner, had wasted his talents writing about it.

Of course, we don't remember the Ruth era today through the eyes of Lardner or Cobb. We remember one of the great men of baseball, who defined an era. The old archetypes that were defining to these men have lost meaning to us. Who wouldn't prefer a game with more give and take between offence and pitching?

To make a similar point: We hold onto the mythology of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier at the risk of forgetting that the color barrier he broke was only about 40 years old when he broke it. It was a creation of the twentieth century. Modernity didn't break down the barrier; it erected it.

Now we're finally getting close to my point. When Keith Hernandez, Willie Wilson, and a dozen others were punished for using cocaine back some 20 years ago, sports writers preached the high moral road. "I hope Hernandez can live with himself the next time some kid goes flying out the window on speed," Dick Young of the NY Daily News wrote.

Why? Did Dick Young think Keith Heranandez sold drugs to teenagers? Or that teenagers did not do drugs before Keith Hernandez?

Here then is my point: Baseball has always constructed for itself a humanism, BASED ON LIES, DISTORTIONS, AND FABRICATIONS, which it then PRETENDS to accept as the "truth." Even though, for the most part, everyone knows it is a fabrication.

Roger Maris supposedly had an asterisk next to his single season record because he played in something like four more games than Ruth when he set his record. Now fans (read: fatuous sports writers) supposedly want an asterisk next to Bonds' single season and all time record.

To imply that BUT for the introduction of steroids the game would have stayed the same from 61 to 2001? That training regimens, ball parks, strategy, culture changed nothing meaningful?

If you inject steroids into someone and supplement that with correct training, you will make him (usally him) stronger than his would otherwise be. That has huge advantages to a baseball player, and some disadvantages which can become huge if it leads to a career threatening injury (as it often has). So what. So does training a ball player to hit for power (instead of average), and to work the count (instead of swinging away), the big changes in baseball culture that Bonds took full advantage of before he ever took steroids.

Humanism is a trope which defines itself through exclusion; and exclusion specifically of the post human (power, color, drugs, in sequence, in baseball).

What'd I say?

The so-called bailout of those struggling--or about to struggle--with steep increases in their mortgage payments announced by the Bush administration today--I'd post a link here, but why bother?--seems to me to follow the pattern I outlined in my last post. Save the predators from gorging on their prey.

Let me look at it another way.

They are dealing with it as a public health problem in the food supply. If the swine flu (remember the swine flu scare of the 70's?) breaks out among the swine in Akron, Ohio, well, the sooner Akron swine are slaughtered, the better; we're not going to try to save them. But if the swine in Columbus are perfectly healthy, we need to protect those swine for later consumption. And there's no point in worrying about the swine in Maine, who have sensible 30 year notes. (Remember the punch line to the old joke: "A pig that good you eat one leg at a time." )

The Bush administration is trying to innoculate the swine in Harrisburg and Erie and Columbus to protect the midwest vampires from the swine flu.

Only it won't work. The midwest vampire capitalists are going to see those sick little piggies in Akron and think, they can't run fast, why shouldn't I eat them? --Because that's how capital thinks. The flu will spread--has spread--throughout the real estate market, and they'll find themselves unable to eat--or even feed--many of the healthy swine.

To drop the metaphor, I'm implying that a tightening of credit and a glut of subprime repossessed homes on the market will spoil the market for good homes.

This will lead to homeowners whose credit could be salvaged losing their homes.

We've seen these cycles before, in the 80's, and less dramatically in the 90's. It'll take years for the market to fully recover. It will take The Motley Fool pointing out that over a 30 year period, the SP 500 outperforms real estate by 120% (or some crap like that), and Real Estate becoming the dirty word that "tech stock" was in 2002. And then the recovery will only have begun.

As Marvin the Robot might have said, I'm depressed just talking about it.

Life, don't talk to me about life.

"Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour"

This quote is famously from Karl Marx, Capital, Vol I, part iii, Chapt 10. Let me quote a bit more:

"Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises"

I was thinking about this in regard to the mortgage crisis. Mortgage foreclosures were up again October, 2007, doubling from 2006, up a bit from September, down a smidge from August 2007, but on pace to produce economic devastation in hundreds of thousands of lives (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22011114/). What I find interesting is the way Marx elides smoothly from "capital" to "capitalist," a shift which no doubt made complete sense at the time. Here's what Marx could have completey anticipated: our governments response to this crisis has been to try to find ways of saving of saving the predators from the prey.

I remember years ago an ecologist at UC Santa Cruz claiming that it was a myth that predators control prey; it is much more true that a population of prey control the growth of predators. Predators, living high on the food chain, occupy an ecologically fragile niche. If something happens to the rabbits the fox feeds on--or to the vegies the rabbits feed on--the foxes die off because the rabbits become fewer and harder to find. The rabbits will recover; the foxes may not.

I remember thinking, sure, fine, except those rabbits who get starved and eaten.

This seems to be the creed behind the Federal Government's response to this problem: we need to protect the banks from being poisoned by the bad blood they've been feeding on. The poor will always be with us; protect those ecologically sensitive vampire capitalists!

The fed is cutting rates. The treasury wants to give the holder's of ARM's the option to not reset those rates. Why not let them continue to foreclose on the poor bastards? Because banks and other financial institutions are getting stuck with houses they can't sell.

Lowering interest rates eases up credit. What does this lead to? Inflation. In essence, a falling dollar and higher interest rates are a hidden tax paid by everyone (which will be paid in higher gasoline prices, for a starter; we know what that leads to) to protect bankers from bad loans.

Is another approach possible? Sure! Federally insured low interest loans made directly to homeowners. Forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the accounting challenged federally mandated corporations which buy and sell these loans. They got us into this mess, and they can deal with their own problems. They people we need to help first are homeowners.

Fred Saberhagen did it first.

Fred Saberhagen did it first.
Before Anne Rice and Interview with a Vampire, long before Elizabeth Koskova’s The Historian, there was Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape. Published in 1975 (A year before Rice’s novel) Saberhagen, who died this past summer, was among the first in the wave of writers chronicling (in book after book after book) good guy vampires.
I’m sure it was an original idea when he thought of it.

I finally read it recently. It could be a lot worse.

Clearly Saberhagen is having fun with Stoker’s writing. When all is said and done, Stoker is a mediocre writer, and his plot has holes the size of Romania in it, which Saberhagen exploits. The chief plot hole is his ignorance of blood type. When Van Helsing performs blood transfusions, he does so completely ignoring blood typology, despite the fact that this was emerging medical knowledge in the late 19th century that the character would have been abreast of. Saberhagen’s conclusion? Van Helsing was a superstitious dolt who killed Lucy through his ignorance, while Dracula was trying to save her. His transformation of her into the “bloofer lady” was a last ditch effort to save her life.

Another plot hole in the original: If it has taken centuries for Dracula to figure out how to get from Transylvania to England, how much of a threat could he really be?

And after all the care Van Helsing takes to make sure that Lucy’s dead body remains dead, how is it that Dracula is dispatched with a Bowie knife? Obviously, he was faking.

The framing device of the novel is that Dracula is offering this revision to the great-great grandson of Jonathon and Mina. At times, though, he apparently reads directly from well known account, to offer his version of events. It’s a strange effect. Basically, we’re reading one novel which is critically commenting on another. I find that kind of thing fun, novelist as critic, but, well, Saberhagen was no John Gardner. It ends with an opening for a sequel (Mina is about to be reborn as the undead), and I gather Mr. Saberhagen wrote many more.

As a revisionist work, it reflects the revisionist spirit of the mid 1970’s, the era of the Eagles, Disco, and EST—a bloodless era, if you will, in popular culture. Interesting that the revision avoids any thoughtful examination of the racial paradigm that Dracula represents (i.e., the ancient aristocracy coming back to feed off the blood of the Bourgeoisie .


More on Bionic Woman

I’m starting to like Michelle Ryan. The wittiest thing they have done with her is to allow her
(in episode 5) to “affect” an accent similar to the actress’s natural speaking voice. The problem is that it is unlikely that the character Jaime Sommers would be able to do this, and now her affected American accent sounds flat by comparison.
I think the director wanted to make a statement that it’s Michelle Ryan’s series, not Katie Sackhoff’s.

I gather that three more episodes are completed. Then, who knows? It’s not a ratings winner, and with the writer’s strike begun, there may be long layover. I doubt NBC will let it die just yet.