The Luck of the Irish

From My Life in the Irish Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter :

The charge was stalled by a wooden rail fence about 60 yards from the Southern line.  The intense fire from Cobb’s Georgians splintered the fence, spattered mud in all directions, and decimated those men moving up behind it.  But still, the Irish came on.

A strange and macabre sound was heard above the exploding artillery shells and pathetic screams of the wounded.  The Confederates were cheering and applauding, overcome by the bravery of their Irish foe.  Maj. Gen. George Pickett of Gettysburg fame wrote after the battle to his fiancée: “Your soldier’s heart almost stood still as he watched those sons of Erin fearlessly rush to their death.  The brilliant assault on Marye’s Heights of their Irish Brigade was beyond description.  Why, my darling, we forgot they were fighting us, and cheer after cheer at their fearlessness went up along our lines.”

Cathy and I are watching Ken Burn’s take on the Civil War.  Usually, the romanticized view (if there is any such thing left) is cut from the heart of the events being described.  Every so often, though, a nugget will slip through.  There is something gratifying about the idea: an enemy, doomed by fate, inferior economic capacity, and moral incorrectness, losing control of themselves and being moved against their will to cheer the bravery and noble self-sacrifice of the “good guys.”   Alas, it is all tosh.  All you have to do is go back a few paragraphs in the narrative (currently published in fragments here) to find out that a large part of Confederate general Cobb’s 28th Massachusetts were, like their foes, recently immigrated Irish.  And at this point in the war — a cold, late December in 1862 — any romantic notions about the war had long since been expelled.  For the most part, these were countrymen on unfamiliar territory, fighting for different sides of a fractured dream of opportunity, held in position by the likelihood of being shot if they dared desert.

The simplified version is much more satisfying.

As a lengthy aside, I must say that the confederates offered much more compelling heroes.  There was, of course, Lee, the genteel and conflicted genius of 1860s warfare; Albert Sidney Johnston, who died with his boot full of blood because he had sent his personal physician to take care of some captured Union soldiers; Stonewall Jackson, of course, the originally and absolutely coldblooded Saint of Killers; and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who could have been an inspiration for Neo fighting against a crowd of Federalist Agent Smiths and, after serving as the KKK’s first grand wizard, urged the dissolution of the Klan before the institution had become the monstrous legend we know and despite today.  All I’m saying here is that, if I were playing a video game version of the Civil War, I would generally favor the confederacy.  It was morally insupportable, of course (like Lincoln, who embraced emancipation mostly because of its political expediency!), but much more satisfying on a purely emotional level.  McClellan was a putz, and Sherman lacked Stonewall’s cool factor; I’d prefer not to get a musket to the face serving either of them.

I wrote most of this thinking of the veterans of our recent wars in Iraq (both of them) and Afghanistan (only one, but reaaaaaally stretched out) and thinking about the confusion around how these wars, and their human cost, are painted in modern media.  In years to come, it is possible that the hazy lens of retrospection will cast an aura of subdued heroism over these conflicts.  The sharp edges of meaning and experience decay so quickly in human time; by the time I am on my deathbed, perhaps the world will largely regard these events as inevitable, perhaps even accidentally useful: the aging and decrepit West strikes out in untargeted frustration, and the East awakens from its Feudal Sleep and assumes its proper place in the world…  More likely, some of us will look back and say, whatever happened to such selfless heroism as that?  And the rest of us — whoever we are at that time — will say, what the hell are you talking about?  Those young people died for something that no one, least of all the politicians of the time, understood properly.

Such is history.  Which is why I don’t study it anymore, except accidentally =)

 

 

Mainspring

Old piece of music, recently touched up.  The vocoder segments are Cathy reciting numbers in French — one through eight.

The Mainspring of a Clock

The title is derived from a 1950s era “libertarian” history entitled “The Mainspring of Human Progress.”  I thought it was full of crap when I read it in 1993, but definitely interesting.  As to the specifics of how the phrase worked its work into this, such questions are probably best not asked.

Mainspring

 

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October by the Fire

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I remember reading Gaiman’s Fragile Things on an Alaskan Airlines flight between DCA and SEA in late 2007 or early 2008. I was delighted when I saw one of Neil’s titles in the airport bookstore, and by the time I disembarked in Bellingham, I was thoroughly intoxicated. It is too dark for Cathy’s taste, but if you like a bit of morbidity with your fairy tales, you cannot go wrong with this book. And since it’s a collection of short stories (and poetry), there’s a great deal of variety. I strongly recommend it!

One of the ideas that stuck with me after reading this came from “October in the Chair,” which is a ghost story contained inside an allegorical story populated by characters representing months of the calendar year. I though it would be absolutely awesome to get a few people together around a fire and take turns reading October-spirited short stories — a little King, a lot of Bradbury, and definitely some Gaiman. It doesn’t have to match the canonical “ghost stories around a fire” trope, a la the opening of The Fog, but a little bit of that wouldn’t really hurt, would it? Sadly, October’s weather and my schedule have been equally inconvenient for making this happen.

To compensate for this failure, I have recorded myself reading “October in the Chair” and I have added campfire sound effects. It’s a pretty crappy amateur recording job, I’m afraid. But if you like Neil Gaiman, or you like ghost stories, or you think you might enjoy listening to my voice in the dark… give it a listen. Running time, 24 minutes and 21 seconds; file size, 44.5 MB.

October in the Chair

Note: my office is woefully inadequate for any serious recording project — too many hard, refractive surfaces.  Also, you will here many instances of my cats mewling in the background.  And Cathy talking to them.  All mangled by my noise filters ;-)

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Occupy What, Exactly?

The Occupy Wall Street movement (or the larger movement formerly known as Occupy Wall Street) has drifted on and off the front page so many times now it’s almost like deja vu.  I mean, didn’t we already read this headline?  But it refuses to die (2 of CNN’s “Latest News” category are devoted to it as of five minutes ago) and I for one am glad.  NOT simply because the opposition movement has generated such an excess of amusing imagery and countermemes:

I Am the 2%

My Father is with the 1%

99% of us died in the making of Episode VI

Although, obviously, it’s done plenty of that.  I approve of this movement because, if you peel back the thin layer of frivolity and pseudo-anarchist revelry that reflects back so much of the media light thrown its way, there are some truly novel features underneath. This movement has a sense of ambition I haven’t seen in public protests in my lifetime: they want to occupy EVERYTHING! And not just occupy it; they want to humanize it, make it serviceable, and to declaw and domesticate the systems they perceive as preying upon the masses. The confused but consistent impetus towards fundamental social and economic transformation in this movement is really quite quixotic. And quixotic is charming!

I have not slurped the delicious milk of humankindness for a long long time and I'm going to make sure you know it, punks

As always, idealistic missions collectively pursued are ready fodder for specific types of attacks: to individualists, they are often seen as “lazy,” to traditionalists, generally “impractical” or “wasteful,” and to political conservatives, they often appear (shudder) “socialistic.” Which is why counterattacks against the 99% meme tend to be so dour, so stingy, and so darn tootin’ self-righteous: they are usually aimed by very serious, generally self-sufficient people at folks perceived to be frivolous at best, and thieves and highwaymen at worst. Yet another example of the old robbers-of-the-republic myth. It is a sad disservice to the multitude of legitimate victims of one of the worst economic climates of the century that merely voicing their woes can lead to accusations of fundamental worthlessness, communist leanings, and congenital warts.

One of the hallmarks of the Occupation movement to date has been its vagueness about what, exactly, is being occupied, what exactly is to be accomplished. I must admit that I doubt the possibility of “success” in the terms an activist might paint them: the banks and moneyed interests will probably not be overthrown, recessions will probably prove immune to political exile, and the Universe will almost certainly not become a fundamentally kind and gentle place. Most likely, nature will remain not only amoral but generally damp and clammy as well. Even worse, regardless of innovations in antimalarial technology, mosquitoes will definitely continue to thrive somewhere on the planet.

However, I also doubt the movement’s detractors’ implicit claim that talk is cheap, useless, or even dangerous. We should talk about things, and at great length. And working together to make the world a better place isn’t just something for college students to theorize about between liberal arts classes: it’s an obligation of every major thought system the planet has ever seen, including capitalism. Experimentation is part of the imperative of our humanity in just the same way that self-improvement is a mandate of the gods of our mothers and fathers. On these precepts, any voice that says or implies “put your heads down and work” should be rejected. The work of free people should be done with heads up and eyes open. And any voice that says “be quiet, you have no right to speak” should be reviled. Speech is our birthright, and silence is death.

If the occupation has done nothing else, it has occupied our collective thoughts for a while — and that is, perhaps, the only important thing. May the Occupation remain thought-provoking.

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Critical Review

So, Cathy and I were just chatting idly about blogging while wrapping up a few evening tasks in the office, and she expressed a rather negative opinion of my tone and style in this blog. After a few back-and-forths nailing down what exactly she objected to, she finally admitted this:

Cathy: “Your blog’s tone is black and cynical.”

Me: “What? WHAT!? Can I quote you on that? Cathy McDonald says ‘this blog is black and cynical.’”

Cathy: “That’s understated. Let’s be more accurate. Your blog is depressing and it makes me want to stick a pencil in my eye and swirl it around.”

Yes, those were her exact words:  “stick a pencil in my eye and swirl it around.”  I was flabbergasted… I mean, I know I tend to posture myself as a fatalist (more out of habit than actuality, I think) but I had no idea that my tone read that bad.

The real question that keeps coming to mind is… should I consider this a victory or a failure?

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Ridiculous Lawsuits

Court is IN SESSION, DAMN IT

I’ve been wanting to see Drive – I’m a little afraid to watch it because it looks rather violent. Also, it has the dreaded 1.4 critical-to-popular approval ratio on Rotten Tomatoes — I can usually do okay with 1.25 and below, but 1.4 is pretty damn high for my blood.

Well, it looks like not all moviegoers are taking it’s high-falutey-ness sitting down. According to CNN, an independent viewer is suing the studio that produced the movie (and the theater she saw it at) for NOT INCLUDING ENOUGH DRIVING IN THE MOVIE. And she’s trying to turn it into a class action lawsuit.

I will presume the legal systems of Europe would never tolerate such tomfoolery — if so, Roberto Benigni would never have been able to make another movie after La vita è bella.

Would anyone like any butter flavored grease on their tort reform?

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