ass-lazy tropicana of the mind
new / old / about / reading / rings / guestbook
2002-05-31
Smarts, sunlight, shows, sensations
Meanwhile, I couldn't stand the sight of him -- in print or on TV. He was a man of talent and ability, to be sure. I recognized that much. He knew how to knock his opponent down quickly and effectively with the fewest possible words. He had an animal instinct for sensing the direction of the wind. But if you paid close attention to what he was saying or what he had written, you knew that his words lacked consistency. They reflected no single worldview based on profound conviction. His was a world that he had fabricated by combining several one-dimensional systems of thought. He could rearrange the combination in an instant, as needed. These were ingenious -- even artistic -- intellectual permutations and combinations. But to me they amounted to nothing more than a game. If there was any consistency to his opinions, it was the consistent lack of consistency, and if he had a worldview, it was a view that proclaimed his lack of a worldview. But these very absences were what constituted his intellectual assets. Consistency and an established worldview were excess baggage in the intellectual mobile warfare that flared up in the mass media's tiny time segments, and it was his great advantage to be free of such things.
He had nothing to protect, which meant that he could concentrate all his attention on pure acts of combat. He needed only to attack, to knock his enemy down. Noboru Wataya was an intellectual chameleon, changing his colour in accordance with his opponent's, ad-libbing his logic for maximum effectiveness, mobilizing all the rhetoric at his command. I had no idea how he had acquired these techniques, but he clearly had the knack of appealing directly to the feelings of the mass audience. He knew how to use the kind of logic that moved the majority. Nor did it even have to be logic: it had only to appear so, as long as it aroused the feelings of the masses.
Trotting out the technical jargon was another forte of his. No one knew what it meant, of course, but he was able to present it in such a way that you knew it was your fault if you didn't get it. And he was always citing statistics. They were engraved on his brain, and they carried tremendous persuasive power, but if you stopped to think about it afterwards, you realized that no one had questioned his sources or their reliability.
These clever tactics of his used to drive me mad, but I was never able to explain to anyone exactly what upset me. I was never able to construct an argument to refute him. It was like boxing with a ghost: your punches just swished through the air. There was nothing solid for them to connect with. I was shocked to see even sophisticated intellectuals responding to him. It would leave me feeling strangely annoyed.
And so Noboru Wataya came to be seen as one of the most intelligent figures of the day. Nobody seemed to care about consistency any more. All they looked for on the tube were the bouts of intellectual gladiators; the redder the blood they drew, the better. It didn't matter if the same person said one thing on Monday and the opposite on Thursday.
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
I just felt like sharing that with everyone. Because I pointed at it and went "Yes! I've known people like that! That's why I'm not in grad school! That's why I dropped out of meta discussion! Right there!"
It's amazing when you read something and you automatically identify with a passage, isn't it? Like, you suddenly realize that you're not alone in the world, that other people feel the same way, and write it down in ways that you didn't think you could ever properly explain.
It feels good.
�
I've been so tired recently. Part of me thinks it's the medication I'm on ("may cause drowsiness and inability to sleep"), but I think part of it is also because it's slowly but surely climbing into summer up here, and that means hours upon hours of sunlight peeking through my bedroom window in the morning.
Like this morning. 4:45 in the freakin' morning, and there's sunlight coming through my window! I don't have to get up until 7:30, and the damn sun's already going "Hey, Kate! Wake up!" and I'm going "Hey, where the fuck were you during the winter? Do you know how hard it is to get up when it's still pitch black outside?"
And then at night -- it doesn't get dark until around 10! 10! I'm mentally convinced it's maybe 8 at the most, probably 6, and it's just getting dark outside, and no --it's 10! I should be in the shower and getting ready for bed already!
Stupid country. I miss the subtropics. At least there, the sun set and rose at more or less the same time no matter what time of the year it was.
�
So I'm tired. Which means, that, aside from the glut of Star Wars I plan to be watching on Monday, I will be spending most of the Jubilee asleep. I hope. I pray. I probably won't. But that's okay, because I also have a lot of webstuff to do for fun and enlightenment.
I foolishly signed up to do two fanlistings -- one for 24 and one for The Wicker Man. Is it safe to say that both are pretty much my crack du jour? Well, The Wicker Man was always something of an addiction for me, and it'll be dead easy to transform The Wicker Game into a fan page, and the 24 one has loads of pictures for me to play with -- I just need to work out the design. I had one possibility, but it was damned impossible for me to work with.
I hate to say this, and it just feels wrong, but I'm beginning to think that I really like having Dreamweaver when I'm making initial layouts -- I figure things out a lot easier that way.
Christ, I feel like a whore saying that. Unclean! Unclean!
But, yeah, 24 = crack. I love love love love love that show. The husband and I sit there and avidly watch it, he's biting his nails and I'm half paying attention to the show and to the realtime IRC chat that a group from the newsgroup hold.
And occasionally, I just tune out on my computer and watch it with my eyes wide. "No freakin' way!" I yell when it's over. "No way!"
24. Crack. God bless it.
(I still want 24 slash, though. Jamey/Nina, darn it!)
�
Currently listening to The Big Easy soundtrack. Reminds me of Mardi Gras, king cake, chicken and andouille gumbo, and the gentle caress of humidity on a spring day.
Mildly homesick. Remembering summer heat, mainly. It seems like I'll never get to wear a tank top in this country again.
Tank top and cut-offs, sitting in my house with my laptop next to me -- a half-frozen pepsi in my hand, swearing at the heat and finally grabbing the nearest thin hawaiian shirt to put over the tank top, my beat-up keds, and catching the Freret Jet, sighing happily inside the air conditioned bus and watching the world go by -- listless university students on bikes, poor black kids next to their beat-up houses, playing in the hose, huge office buildings with wilting businessmen walking to and fro, and then I'm down in the Quarter, where it's still roasting and the tourists look like they want nothing better than to spend the entire trip in their hotel room, but all the gift shops have their doors wide open, and the blasts of artic chills from them cool you down as you walk.
I slip on my shades, and hit the roads.
visit other places: dymphna.net / livejournal / wish list
joined: diary reg / diary crit / diary review / tiki reviews / gblog / little queer / hit or miss / mac-made / btjs:cordy
designed february 2002 by kate bolin, dymphna.net design. space provided by diaryland. looks best in ie5+ on a macintosh, but that's unsurprising, isn't it?