the hour nears
and with trembling hands
he begins to fold me
like a sheet
to be made small
to be slowly eaten
digested
or exfoliated
he pops me in his mouth
like a communion wafer
and i let his saliva
enclose and begin
to break me down
but i'm smiling
and from the gaps in his teeth
i watch the fireworks explode
because this is the new year
and he -- my consumer
is the new me.

Lego had just come home from the groomers (who had basically shorn him), and he was shivering like a coke addict. This is when I decided that our dear puppy needed an extra layer. WalMart, I thought, would surely cater to my modest pet clothing needs. They no doubt have mountains of variety for poochy pullovers.

Thirty minutes later, I stared dejectedly at the selection in front of me. Apparently only female dogs get cold (or only females own Shih Tzus). Reluctantly, I pulled the manliest one I could find off of the hook and beeped it hurriedly through the self-checkout lane (I would be insane to let a cashier see this).

Now we have one warm, sexually ambiguous Lego. With all that bling on his back, it's no wonder he belongs to the A-List ;)

The book topping my reading list over the break was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. There was apparently quite a bit of hype surrounding this book when it was published. In 1991, in fact, Ted Turner awarded Mr. Quinn half a million bucks (the largest sum ever awarded to a single work of literature) because it offered "creative and positive solutions to global problems." My buddy Aaron Milstead gave me a copy, and he wasn't the first person to recommend me reading it once I mentioned that I'm writing a story about Cain. I went ahead and read it, and the following is my critique. Do not read any further if you have any intention of reading it.

The protagonist of the book reads an ad in the paper: "Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The teacher ends up being this telepathic gorilla named Ishmael who reminds me very much of Beast from Xmen. As any guru worth his salt would do, Ishmael leads the protagonist through a maze of mysterious questions whose answers build on each other and eventually form an understanding of why the world sucks and what to do to fix it. Here is the gist of Quinn's solution:

To begin with, Quinn divides the world into two classes of people which he names the Leavers and the Takers. The Takers are those of you reading this blog. Any "civilized" person who relies chiefly on agriculture bought in a store is a Taker. A Leaver is a person who relies on nature like a hunter-gatherer, or who grows only enough food to sustain their needs, and doesn't impose their way of life on other creatures.

These two classes exist because they each are enacting a different story. By story, Quinn means metanarrative, or that which explains our origins, the present, and our destiny. The Taker's story, Quinn argues, is based primarily on the book of Genesis, in which Man takes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Quinn equates "the knowledge of good and evil" with "the presumption to decide who gets to live and who gets to die." Man then considers himself capable of deciding that civilized man gets to live (and expand), and that everything impeding this expansion (including nature) should be brought under submission (or die). This program of expansion, according to Quinn, is against the laws of nature, and will ultimately lead to the downfall of man, if not the extinction of all life on the planet. Hence, the Genesis account is really about Adam deciding he will expand beyond his needs (take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), and this will lead to his death (severance from the tree of life). He goes on further to say that the conflict between Cain and Abel is actually a conflict over those engaging in the agricultural revolution (Cain) and those who were animal herders (Abel).

The Leaver story is:

• The world was not made for man.


• Our origins were evolution.


• In order for evolution to take place, species must obey the laws of nature (not take beyond what they need).


• There are all sorts of species just waiting to gain self-awareness if man would just quit breaking the laws of nature and allow evolution to continue. Then man can evolve into something else and the other species (the dolphins, etc) can thank us later for letting them evolve.

The answer to all of what's wrong with the world, Quinn suggests, is that we preserve the Leavers that are left on the planet and try to learn from them.

I'm not going for accuracy with the reading above. If some of you who have read Ishmael want to correct me on any points I've missed/misconstrued, bring it up in the comments.

My critique in a nutshell, negatives first:

1. The panacea Quinn puts forward here is too simplistic. Obeying the laws of nature is a good thing, but I see it as only a part of the problem that Quinn is trying to address. Although he admits that his solution doesn't address things like "ethical" issues, I'm afraid the ethical issues are tangled up with everything else. He is guilty of a kind of dualism that seeks to seperate our "physical existence" from our "spiritual existence."


2. Quinn is way too idealistic when it comes to Leaver societies. Anthropological debates on the subject have gone back and forth, but there's data out there showing that Leaver societies are no more well adapted than we are to our environment.


3. His reading of Genesis is far removed from exegesis. He his appropriating a myth for his own purpose, which is fine, but he needn't be pretentious about it. One of the problems with his reading of Genesis is that he sets Cain up as representing the agricultural revolution against Abel who represents animal herding. According to Gen 4:20, however, one of Cain's descendants (Jabal) actually invents herding. He also relegates Eve to some metaphor for overpopulation. He seems to be sentitive to gender issues elsewhere in the novel, but I'm afraid he missteps here.


4. He swallows evolution whole and doesn't attempt to problematize it (e.g. Darwin's Black Box and the other issues which recently fueled the Intelligent Design craze). Also, in order to support the Leaver story, he makes the statement that there are species all over the planet on the verge of evolving into self-aware beings. I would like to see where he gets this data. Also, if the world is not made for humanity, how does he explain that we are the first to attain self-awareness? He seems to write this off as just chance.


5. The message, however, is a politically true message. I mean that in the sense that while not the most holistic solution to the problems facing the world, it is certainly a step in the right direction.


6. Quinn did a great job of conveying the idea in such a way that anyone could "get it." Though perhaps annoyingly slow on the uptake, the protagonist takes his time learning these concepts, giving us plenty of time to digest them.


7. What better way to convey deep truths than from the telepathic mind of a half-ton gorilla?

Today, my friends, I am a setter of trends, a breaker of the laws of pant. I bring to you a vision of things to come: THE JOCKET. Yes, the handsome man in the picture beneath these words is indeed me, and yes, that brown splotch I'm pointing at is a gateway to tomorrow. Even our dog Lego was atounded.



So how did this wonderment come about? Allow me to expound. Last night we were sitting on the couch watching Il Postino, and it occured to me that this little poet is frequently bereft of a medium on which to record his miracles of verse. And so BEHOLD! The Jocket sprang forth from the heavens and struck my imagination like a spring loaded Rock'em Sock'em robot punch!



It was deviously simple. Take a pair of pants that doesn't fit, cut out a square, and sew it on a pair that does fit. The trick, of course, is making that square the perfect size for a journal. Journal + Pocket = JOCKET!!!



So where did I learn to sew so well? I didn't. Eralda's mother is a wicked wicked seamstress. She pumped this sucker out in like 20 minutes. Little did she know that with every thread loop she was forging a legacy. Her hands will go down in history as the hands belonging to the first Jocket jockey! How joyous! To commemorate the birth of the Jocket I penned a pleasing poem:

sea change

this prayer leaves from lips
calloused by courser words
they return to me; every utterance
wriggling like tape worms
at the lobe of my ear

so i send these words
Christ words
savior words
hoping that
though they be
but drops of iodine
in the blackest sea
they might turn
the whole thing red
that crimson waves
might drown the dead

that these paper boats
i send aloft
might find their berth
in a gentle cove
of an island where
what drives me
what finishes me
is an infinity, Lord,
with you.

Color us movie snobs, but there are few movies the Tarpleys consider worth adding to their DVD collection. Recently, we forked up the dough to go see The Fountain. We went hesitantly, fearing that yet again we would be let down by a movie who's trailer looked awesome.

Let me tell you that The Fountain is the best cinematic experience we've had since seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Here's why:

The cinematography is wicked. We spent a lot of time zoomed in on people's faces, which might have been bad if the acting was sub-par. Instead, we experienced emotions as they rolled like thunder clouds across the faces of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Each scene is deliciously colorful. And who would have thought that watching the sillouhette of Jackman as he performs Tai Chi in outer space would be strangely moving? I sure didn't, but it was.

I mentioned the acting above. It was superb. For those of you having a hard time picturing Jackman without an adamantium exoskeleton, let me tell you that he pulls it off masterfully.

The plot is intricately interwoven. It is delicate, and if you don't pay attention and listen closely, you will miss things. This, however, seems to have been done intentionally. You will walk away feeling like you could perform several disparate "viewings." In the end, however, the power and the message of the story is clear.

The soundtrack is eery and gorgeous. If you have any desire to go see this movie, be sure NOT to check out the soundtrack first. Part of the experience is being exposed to the original score as the movie progresses. After the movie, buy the soundtrack. Unlike most original scores, the tracks are between 4-7 minutes long and have great "relisten" value.

Much like the first Matrix movie, there is a significant amount of philosophy lying just beneath the surface. It's fun trying to decode Biblical, Mayan, and Buddhist references.

Hollywood has unfortunately labeled this movie as SciFi. If you're not a fan of SciFi, let it be know that this is more of a cerebral romance/philosophical epic. If you are a fan of SciFi and/or action movies, be warned that there is little of this. But you WILL NOT be bored. You will feast your eyes upon:

• Mayan Indians


• Franciscan Monks


• Conquistadores


• A Grand Inquisitor


• Brain Surgery


• Space Travel


• Er... Botany

DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS of this post if you have not seen the movie. I am going to post my "viewing" of the movie. If you have seen it, I'm curious to see what others thought.

as i walked up to it
the statue proffered something from its hand
no one else was looking
and statues don't proffer everyday
to get to it i had to wade through fountain water
slipping on pennies
getting jeans wet and so too my shoes
it was taller than me
so i climbed up
on one statue foot
and as i reached up
the hand released to me
what i had quested for
turns out it was just
a stick of gum
i guess i expected excalibur
and i told the statue it was a jerk
what did you expect, asked the statue
and it told me
as if i didn't know
that its heart was made of stone.

I've always believed in the idea that fields of study - whether we're talking Biology, Physics, Marketing, Conflict Resolution, or Papier Mache - all suffer from a kind of blindness. It's a blindness that can be blamed on jargon. As an undergrad, you feel pressured to choose a major. From there, the bulk of your learning experience is the molding of your brain to think in terms of your chosen field. This is most evidently done through the learning of a new sub-language, a matrix of jargon used to rapidly exchange ideas specifically relevant to that field. For instance, having been a computer science major, these two sentences make perfect sense to me:

"Dude, the reason your code is hosed is because you're trying to instantiate an abstract class. Polymorphism requires that you first inheret from that class, extend that class, and then try to instantiate."

The effect on people left outside of this jargon game is a sense of awe and wonder that you speak in such elevated language. The reality is that someone who was a highly formative contributor to the field came up with a concept which was then, for the sake of efficiency, given a fancy term which encapsulates this concept. This fancy term is nothing more than jargon, a vacuum bag compacting an ideology down into a nice, portable word.

Collapsing ideology down into jargon is useful for having conversations with people inside of the field. Unfortunately, this jargon becomes a barrier to the outside world which inhibits the influx of any radically new ideas. Equally damaging is the fact that if one aspect of the ideology comprising a particular jargon word is flawed or incomplete, it becomes difficult for a field to change direction. The flawed concept is part of their vocabulary and literally becomes how they think about a problem.

Western dualism is a perfect example. Ingrained in the way we speak is this divide between body and soul, subject and object, epistemology and ontology, eternal and transitive. This subject has been fascinating for a couple of centuries now for philosophers and artists.



What if the original concept on which all of this jargon is based is flawed? What if instead of two isolated entities in dialogue, we are comprised of a core similar to the idea of the Imago Dei which then extends up through socially constructed layers in order to manifest itself perceptually as something individual and entirely unique? The language of dualism becomes a hindrance to understanding this new concept. It is not some complicated relationship between body and soul, it is something altogether different. In this new model we are both "one with the universe" and completely unique.



Regardless of how accurate the above model is, it serves to illustrate that jargon can make it difficult to think out of the box. So what's the solution? In a word: Wikipedia. Whenever someone contributes to Wikipedia, they are (or should be) writing to someone they assume is outside of their field. There is an act of translation, an unpacking of jargon. Wikipedia can then act as a portal or common area for every participating field. Ideological blindspots can be pointed out, and new ideas can be injected into incomplete concepts.

I'm not saying we need to get rid of jargon, but by exposing the concepts hidden and locked away by jargon, people from the outside can directly learn and critique, thereby increasing the probability of things like:

A company working on ATM cameras stumbles upon a possible exception to one of the laws of thermodynamics.

An Israeli restaurant owner comes up with the world's most elegant algorithm for machine translation.