onsdag 30 november 2011
torsdag 24 november 2011
Unique
Sometimes it strikes me how spectacular life is.
There's no guarantee of it, but by the simple task of picking up a book and turning on my playlist, I may be doing something that no human being has ever done before: In this case, reading a Swedish book on child psychology while listening to a Punjabi rapper.
Uniqueness is all around us.
There's no guarantee of it, but by the simple task of picking up a book and turning on my playlist, I may be doing something that no human being has ever done before: In this case, reading a Swedish book on child psychology while listening to a Punjabi rapper.
Uniqueness is all around us.
lördag 19 november 2011
So hey guys Christmas and stuff
Is it my turn to do the Christmas calendar this year? I had completely forgotten we usually have one of those...
torsdag 17 november 2011
The Thrill of the Vulgar
What is it that's so appealing about the unappealing?
Why is that things that are vulgar, obscene and shocking have entertainment value? Mind, I'm not trying to discredit that entertainment value: It is genuinely enjoyable sometimes. With the right timing, the right delivery, vulgarity has value. I just don't know why it does.
I'm not just talking about comedy, either, even though that's where it sees greatest use. When the psychotic villain licks the heroes' face for no other reason than that he's perverse and weird, it's not funny, but it's still somehow appealing: It's thrilling, and it can often highlight villainy much more than anything actually evil.
It must have something to do with breaking rules, I think. There's an immense thrill to breaking rules, and things that are vulgar sort of by definition break the unwritten rules of society. Perhaps that's why they are appealing and unappealing at once - the unwritten rules of society are arguably very important to us, and we don't want anyone else to break them... yet at the same time, nothing is as tempting as forbidden fruit.
Being vulgar is definitely an art, though. It's pretty hard to offend people in a way that they'll find exciting, funny, or surprising. Chances are you'll just end up looking like kind of a massive cockfag.
Over and out.
Why is that things that are vulgar, obscene and shocking have entertainment value? Mind, I'm not trying to discredit that entertainment value: It is genuinely enjoyable sometimes. With the right timing, the right delivery, vulgarity has value. I just don't know why it does.
I'm not just talking about comedy, either, even though that's where it sees greatest use. When the psychotic villain licks the heroes' face for no other reason than that he's perverse and weird, it's not funny, but it's still somehow appealing: It's thrilling, and it can often highlight villainy much more than anything actually evil.
It must have something to do with breaking rules, I think. There's an immense thrill to breaking rules, and things that are vulgar sort of by definition break the unwritten rules of society. Perhaps that's why they are appealing and unappealing at once - the unwritten rules of society are arguably very important to us, and we don't want anyone else to break them... yet at the same time, nothing is as tempting as forbidden fruit.
Being vulgar is definitely an art, though. It's pretty hard to offend people in a way that they'll find exciting, funny, or surprising. Chances are you'll just end up looking like kind of a massive cockfag.
Over and out.
söndag 13 november 2011
Mr. Wright on Beauty
The following is a very long quote, reposted here because I liked it:
"One day, rummaging through a dusty old attic in a small Austrian town, a collector comes across a faded manuscript containing many pages of music. It is written for the piano. Curious, he takes it to a dealer. The dealer phones a friend, who appears half an hour later. When he sees the music he becomes excited, then puzzled. This looks like the handwriting of Mozart himself, but it isn’t a well-known piece. In fact, he’s never heard it. More phone calls. More excitement. More consultations. It really does seem to be Mozart. And, though some parts seem distantly familiar, it doesn’t correspond to anything already known in his works.
Before long, someone is sitting at a piano. The collector stands close by, not wanting to see his precious find damaged as the pianist turns the pages. But then comes a fresh surprise. The music is wonderful. It’s just the sort of thing Mozart would have written. It’s energetic and elegiac by turns, it’s got subtle harmonic shifts, some splendid tunes, and a ringing finale. But it seems … incomplete. There are places where nothing much seems to be happening, where the piano is simply marking time. There are other places where the writing is faded and it isn’t quite clear, but it looks as though the composer has indicated, not just one or two bars rest, but a much longer pause.
Gradually the truth dawns on the excited little group. What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. There must have been a complete work of art which would now, without additional sheet music, be almost impossible to reconstruct; they don’t know if the piano was to accompany an oboe or a bassoon, a violin or a cello, or perhaps a full string quartet or some other combination of instruments. If those other parts could be found, they would make complete sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them. …
This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole."
--N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, reposted on slacktivist.
"One day, rummaging through a dusty old attic in a small Austrian town, a collector comes across a faded manuscript containing many pages of music. It is written for the piano. Curious, he takes it to a dealer. The dealer phones a friend, who appears half an hour later. When he sees the music he becomes excited, then puzzled. This looks like the handwriting of Mozart himself, but it isn’t a well-known piece. In fact, he’s never heard it. More phone calls. More excitement. More consultations. It really does seem to be Mozart. And, though some parts seem distantly familiar, it doesn’t correspond to anything already known in his works.
Before long, someone is sitting at a piano. The collector stands close by, not wanting to see his precious find damaged as the pianist turns the pages. But then comes a fresh surprise. The music is wonderful. It’s just the sort of thing Mozart would have written. It’s energetic and elegiac by turns, it’s got subtle harmonic shifts, some splendid tunes, and a ringing finale. But it seems … incomplete. There are places where nothing much seems to be happening, where the piano is simply marking time. There are other places where the writing is faded and it isn’t quite clear, but it looks as though the composer has indicated, not just one or two bars rest, but a much longer pause.
Gradually the truth dawns on the excited little group. What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. There must have been a complete work of art which would now, without additional sheet music, be almost impossible to reconstruct; they don’t know if the piano was to accompany an oboe or a bassoon, a violin or a cello, or perhaps a full string quartet or some other combination of instruments. If those other parts could be found, they would make complete sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them. …
This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole."
--N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, reposted on slacktivist.
torsdag 27 oktober 2011
A Quote
"Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."
--Conan the Cimmerian, in Queen of the Black Coast.
--Conan the Cimmerian, in Queen of the Black Coast.
onsdag 26 oktober 2011
My problem with pony haters
So, most of this might be pretty obvious to anyone who reads my blog, but I'm still going to put it up here because it bothers me.
People are being confused, even upset, by the My Little Pony fandom. At first glance, the accusations seem to (sort of) make sense: When grown men watch childrens' cartoons, isn't that a little strange? Grown men should enjoy things for grown men, children should enjoy things for children. Simple.
However, the thing is, nobody seriously applies this principle in a broad sense. Few people really bat an eyelash if a grown man owns Finding Nemo on DVD, or if he has a bunch of Superman* comics, or if he owns a few collectible Transformers. Sure, people might roll their eyes and call him a nerd, but most people still seem to grasp the basic idea: Boys will be boys. It's not strange if a grown man wants to regress to being a little boy from time to time - even your most stuck-up, snobby banker can admit to enjoying some childish activity from time to time.
So the moral outrage and confusion clearly doesn't stem from the idea of grown-ups enjoying something for children. Instead, I think, it's rooted in a deeply anti-feminist statement, which is this: Nobody seriously wants to be a girl.
I'm not saying that pony fans are all transsexual, of course. It's just that we, culturally, still have some idea of "cooties". It's by no means explicit; it's a very subtle idea that we seem to have, that doing or liking feminine things is like a sickness. It's basically the same as fear of "catching the gay". So exposing yourself to something girly (like say, My Little Pony) means that you might turn into a "girl" (very important quote marks there): Effeminate, ornamental, helpless, and so on. Why would anyone want that?
So this contradiction appears in peoples' minds, a contradiction that pits two entirely false ideas against each other: "Girls are worthless" and "Guys who do feminine things become girly". Neither is in any way true. If you believed only one to be true, the behaviour wouldn't seem strange: If you believe, for instance, that it's just fine and peachy to be as much of a girly-girl as you like irrespective of your biological sex, then it won't at all be strange for a guy to wear pink hairbows and giggle and watch My Little Pony. On the other hand, if you believe that being "a girl" is "bad" (irrespective of biological sex), but not that say, wearing pink transforms you into "a girl", then logically you should be fine with anyone wearing pink as well - it's just a color, it has nothing to do with the undesirable qualities of being pretty and helpless.
The strangeness only occurs if you believe both statements to be true. And, as it turns out, both of them are absolute bullshit.
*This example is out of date, admittedly. Comic books are today mostly written for adults. During the Silver Age, though, they were written predominantly for children, and the reason there was a demographic shift was that adults started reading them anyway.
People are being confused, even upset, by the My Little Pony fandom. At first glance, the accusations seem to (sort of) make sense: When grown men watch childrens' cartoons, isn't that a little strange? Grown men should enjoy things for grown men, children should enjoy things for children. Simple.
However, the thing is, nobody seriously applies this principle in a broad sense. Few people really bat an eyelash if a grown man owns Finding Nemo on DVD, or if he has a bunch of Superman* comics, or if he owns a few collectible Transformers. Sure, people might roll their eyes and call him a nerd, but most people still seem to grasp the basic idea: Boys will be boys. It's not strange if a grown man wants to regress to being a little boy from time to time - even your most stuck-up, snobby banker can admit to enjoying some childish activity from time to time.
So the moral outrage and confusion clearly doesn't stem from the idea of grown-ups enjoying something for children. Instead, I think, it's rooted in a deeply anti-feminist statement, which is this: Nobody seriously wants to be a girl.
I'm not saying that pony fans are all transsexual, of course. It's just that we, culturally, still have some idea of "cooties". It's by no means explicit; it's a very subtle idea that we seem to have, that doing or liking feminine things is like a sickness. It's basically the same as fear of "catching the gay". So exposing yourself to something girly (like say, My Little Pony) means that you might turn into a "girl" (very important quote marks there): Effeminate, ornamental, helpless, and so on. Why would anyone want that?
So this contradiction appears in peoples' minds, a contradiction that pits two entirely false ideas against each other: "Girls are worthless" and "Guys who do feminine things become girly". Neither is in any way true. If you believed only one to be true, the behaviour wouldn't seem strange: If you believe, for instance, that it's just fine and peachy to be as much of a girly-girl as you like irrespective of your biological sex, then it won't at all be strange for a guy to wear pink hairbows and giggle and watch My Little Pony. On the other hand, if you believe that being "a girl" is "bad" (irrespective of biological sex), but not that say, wearing pink transforms you into "a girl", then logically you should be fine with anyone wearing pink as well - it's just a color, it has nothing to do with the undesirable qualities of being pretty and helpless.
The strangeness only occurs if you believe both statements to be true. And, as it turns out, both of them are absolute bullshit.
*This example is out of date, admittedly. Comic books are today mostly written for adults. During the Silver Age, though, they were written predominantly for children, and the reason there was a demographic shift was that adults started reading them anyway.
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