Seven Red

Blah blah blah:

• she no longer works for troubled (American) Giant Financial Institution. Now she works for Giant Non-American Financial Institution. Doing more or less the same thing. Her team stormed out when they had another offer.  You basically don’t tell anyone you’re leaving until the day you leave, at which point you walk up to the Ops manager with a resignation letter and say “I’m going to such and such a place; please forward my personal belongings.” And storm out. This is the established protocol for what the industry calls “walking across the street.” I like this idea, and think there should be more of it.
• Cheap eats: Just around the corner, a kick ass Vietnamese bakery where I get a grilled pork sandwich (called Banh Mi) for $3.62. That’s Chicago on a shoestring. Yums.
• I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with Diego’s “Rescue Pack.” For those of you who don’t watch, Diego is an animal rescuer who goes on many advetures, well, rescuing animals. Whenever he gets in a particularly difficult jam, he calls on his handy “Rescue Pack,” which is a talking orange backpack he carries around, and which can only be “activated” by loud shouts of Activite!, in Spanish. Once activated, the Rescue Pack offers a set of options for escaping from the current dilemma. So, if the mischievous Bobo Brothers (two troublesome monkeys) cause an avalanche with their monkey business, the Rescue Pack – after a musical number that, in a disturbingly catchy tune, notes that the Rescue Pack is “coming to the rescue” – will offer up a bicycle, a dune buggy, and a sled, leaving you, the viewer, to choose which solution will most effectively deliver Diego from the monkey-caused snow event. And thus suddenly materializes a sled from the Rescue Pack, and Diego goes sledding down the avalanche to safety. Now I’m sure various child psychologists have their hands all over this thing and have determined that the choice between the means of escape promotes creative problem solving and all that. So I get the whole options thing, but it troubles me for three reasons. First, I’m a neurotic who gets worked up over stuff like this, but that’s a given. Second, it violates the most basic principles of Aristotle’s Poetics by building a deus ex rescue pack into every episode (as did the old Bat Man, but that’s another story). Finally, it gives the kids the idea that there’s an easy solution for every pressing problem. But, really, fourth, it confirms Aristotle’s argument for me, in that I am troubled by the deus ex machina for the same reason that Aristotle was really troubled by it. Formally the deus ex machina is an annoying and cheap device that disrupts the unity of the composition (the action should make sense internally, so you can’t build up an impossible situation only to rescue it with a new device that hasn’t yet been introduced into the ensemble). Fine. Every first year English major knows that. But I think Aristotle is, like me, more annoyed by the pedagogical force of the deus ex machina, in its reassurance that every problem, no matter how grave, comes packaged with a magical solution. This type of thing is deadly for a society, is the point.  So I’m troubled because I agree. But maybe, fifth, I’m really troubled because my father used to mouth sarcastic comments at stuff on teevee when I was a kid, and it absolutely drove me into a silent rage. He’d never just let the show be a show, and I hated that. And yet here I find myself saying stuff like “Oh, here comes the Rescue Pack…and a magic raft just in time to save Diego from the flood…what a miracle…” just as Ellie is yelling activite! activite! trying to get the damn Rescue Pack to open. So maybe, to set Aristotle aside and make it a Mommy-Daddy-Me thing, I’m really troubled because I’m turning into my father. Oedipus at last!
• I believe that once a car reaches ten years of age, it becomes eligible for a nickname. Not before.
• “The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fuck the proletariat; and so on. And there is no need to resort to metaphors, any more than for the libido to go by way of metamorphoses. Hitler got the fascists sexually aroused. Flags, nations, armies, banks get a lot of people aroused.” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
• If you’re looking for about the most depressing show on television, try The First 48. The premise is simple: most murders are solved within the first forty-eight hours, so this show follows homicide detectives in several cities as they investigate a murder – for the first forty-eight hours. Now, I’m a great lover of the murder show, whether it be an hour-long drama, the various “real forensics” shows, a two-hour Dateline special on some trial, or documentary like Paradise Lost or The Staircase. I will basically watch one of these shows at any hour of the day or night if I’m not busy, and I know this is a population effect, since now they have a network through which I can do just that (the Investigation Discovery Network). Point being, I know me my murder shows. But TF48 really takes the cake. What you learn watching the show is very simple: most murders are over piddling bullshit, done by sad people to sad people, done by dumb people, hastily, stupidly, and wretchedly. You learn that most suspects are identified not by wacky, futuristic DNA techniques, but by people calling in and reporting tips. You learn that most murders are solved not in some gotcha interview, but by the suspect simply confessing, without much pressure, with no lawyer present, and seemingly without regard for the complete wreck of their own lives. People kill each other over nothing – a silly drunken argument, three or four hundred dollars, or petty beefs escalated past any reasonable levels, poorly planned robberies gone awry, some agitated moment that soon passes. They leave obvious clues at the scene, and when I say obvious, I mean their own fucking cell phones. They tell everybody they know about it, and someone invariably calls the police. They tell ridiculous and non-credible stories before succumbing and confessing. It’s pathetic, in the classical sense. But the show is a good antidote to the other murder shows, which almost always include some complex plot or other that has to be untangled and leads to a complicated and suspenseful trial. These really do stand out because they are the exceptions, these “exciting” storylines. But mostly it’s just ugly and sad.
• On a brighter note, I’ll be reporting next week from my old home town of San Francisco, where I’ll be attending the annual 4C’s conference. You may have noticed that I only offered 15 of the Top 20 4C’s Presentation Mistakes last time, so I’ll be on the look-out for more. Hell, I may even commit some to fill out my list. Don’t kid yourself: the paper’s ready to go; I’m just fine-tuning the handout. But just to annoy my audience, I will be starting my presentation with a QUIZ. I was inspired by an internet quiz that asked you to determine whether the person in a picture was a porn star or a Fox News reporter. I scored 4 out of 10. Yeah, I groove like that.  So, Number 16: administering pointless quiz at the beginning of a presentation? Maybe! Stay tuned.

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