Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

It used to be that trucks that were carrying gasoline said that they were inflammable, and as it happened a lot of people, even people who worked around these trucks, would be found lighting up cigarettes and unfortunately blowing up the trucks. Why would they possibly do that? A pair of linguists discovered that there was this unconscious association with this word inflammable, which they thought meant not flammable. So now all gasoline trucks say “flammable,” which wasn’t even a word beforehand.

human becoming

become a victim of yr own
imagination
be drunk and sad-sad so maybe
then you'll understand why yr
so unhappy
be rowdy and cause ruckus
holler at cute skirt as it passes
puke, smoke a cigarette, and write
for the masses
that will only
hassle you when all you need is a
friend
when depressed, turn to conformity
it will ease yr pain and yr
family's lingering embarrassment
when meditative and contemplative, turn
to TV to kill off all individual
inspiration
drink triple espressos and use
condoms when being intimate
remember to stay under control at
all times and never let yr conclusions
be too drastic
when fucking, talk dirty and call
her a slut
be happy

For You, My Dear

When you walk

 you float

If you trip

 everyone stops

You only care to win; so,

like your father,

you can gloat

I saw it all but yr nasty flattery

destabilized me

You blew yr affection out before we

even started

Anything goes

as long as

in the end

you get to play

  victim

you say I care too much

about trifling people

you don't concern about

the one who adores you

you pretend

you don't know

a dvd bootlegger at the metro stop

disapproves of you

I met you more

than halfway

but

you just kept

walking

Kinky Destroy

Elisabeth with an S
she protests

miscommunication wires
       laid
uncontained by Oceans death
decisive derisions jog
    emasculatory gamut

Eunuch in Tunic!
Guard the Harem!
Disco! Crisco!
Feed the seraph

lusty eggs mature
    staid
stench narrows into
    salt
Answers? ephemeral

Boy Scout! Cub Scout!
kamp kommando
Liar! Fire!
Blow my candle

Rosé

In third grade I read
        aloud the name José 
   and pronounced it "joes"
the teacher's restrained giggle was
      like a clarion
    reddening my cheeks
    lowering my eyes


Last week I ordered a bottle 
         of Rosé wine
     in the company of a woman
the menu neglected the accent
  while the waiter haughtily
      corrected my "rows"

White Shame in 3-D -- Film Review: Avatar

I'm no expert on science fiction films, and although I don't consider myself an ardent aficionado whatsoever, there exist a handful of films for which I have a great affection.  It has occurred to me that reduced to core principles, the genre of science fiction consists of two basic archetypes:  a.  advanced human society engenders inanimate objects (i.e. robots) with artificial intelligence to improve their lives only for the sentient computers to spiral diabolically out of control and attempt to enslave or exterminate humans; or b. advanced human society encountering advanced alien lifeforms, whether they come to us or we go to them is left to the descretion of the filmmaker, but a semi-apocalyptic battle for superiority is inevitable.  Naturally, there are many instances of these archetypes overlapping and the preeminent science fiction film of them all, the one that really defined the genre, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey synthesizes them with such profoundly bizarre virtuosity that all subsequent forays into science fiction are relegated to its shadow.

There is also the fantasy subcategory, where the filmmaker creates an entirely original world that is only faintly recognizable to our own.  With Avatar, writer and director James Cameron embraces archetype B, heavily imbuing it with CGI phantasmagoria, simultaneously adapting colonialist excursions Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas. 

First let me address the highly touted technological aspects of the film, and then I'll deconstruct its themes.  Effects wise, Avatar has no equal.  Cameron's vision of an alternate Earthlike planet, Pandora, complete with incandescent plantlife, hexapod animalia, and 10 feet tall humanoids is impressive not only in its conception but more so in the execution.  Imagine the Amazon rainforest on steroids and then imagine explaining that vision to graphic artists so that it'll actually look cool.


The version I saw claimed to be 3-D IMAX, however, it seemed to me to simply be a converted theatre with a slightly larger screen hauled in a week before.  I would think that seeing Avatar at a screen solely dedicated to IMAX would have made the visual experience even more satisfying.  I am skeptical regarding the 3-D part as well.  Certainly there were moments in the film where objects felt like they were coming out of the screen, and perhaps in a 164 minute film the 3-D novelty wears off quickly, but it seemed like 3-D IMAX in reality means Super High Definition.  (Quick note to James Cameron:  3 hours of wearing uncomfortable and unsightly glasses is too much) 

As I state in my opening remarks, the plotting is nothing new.  In the year 2154, a human mercenary is recruited by a corporate mining company to the planet Pandora, in the Alpha Centauri star system, to inhabit the bluish 10 foot tall body of the genetically engineered native Pandoran humanoid lifeforms, the Na'vi -- hence the title Avatar.  His mission is to infiltrate their society, learn their ways, and convince them to abandon their home, a collossal tree called appropriately, HomeTree, so that the corporation can mirthfully mine the element "unobtainium" which goes for $20 million per kilo on the Earthly market.  A middle schooler can see where this is going.  

The allegory is so thinly veiled that it hardly qualifies being called an allegory.  Besides being blue and accessorizing tails, the Na'vi conspicuously resemble the American Indian, and their manner of social interaction is a goofy synthesis of Apaches on the warpath in old Westerns and tribalist histrionics of the animated Pocahontas.  The heavy-handed subtext is clearer than the 3-D resolution:  the white man perpetuating imperialism upon an unsuspecting and defenseless native population for the purpose of exploiting natural resources.  Pandora could have just as easily been called Iraq, or Vietnam, or Dakota.  It is no coincidence that all the antagonists reek WASPish, and in fact I didn't notice a minority on the mercenary (bad guys) side until the final 15 minutes.


James Cameron is the modern day Cecil B. DeMille, a pure epic storyteller.  Like most epic storytellers, the draw is in the spectacle, not the narrative.  No one went to see The Ten Commandments to be ecumenically educated, and thirteen year old girls didn't return to the cinemas six weekends in a row to follow the labyrinthian plot twists of Titanic.  Avatar is a good movie, a servicable movie, with above-average action sequences and superior CGI effects, unfortunately it disavows the audience's inherent sophistication, or rather, discredits it in favour of iridiscent 10 foot tall perkiness.

The Denial Twist

You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
that she was singing it all along

but you were hearing a different song


Upon every unveiling of public scandal, particularly ones in which the general public feels betrayed by an institution or individual, I get to thinking whether the shock expressed is truly warranted.  I'm referring of course to Tiger Woods and his now infamously daily growing harem. 

Let me put the Tiger aside for a moment and quickly peruse a few other high-profile scandals.  There's the grandaddy of them all:  Watergate.  Dick Nixon glumly told the American people on national TV that he wasn't a crook, but his public service record, in spite of his apparent success, had leaks of unethical, self-serving behavior throughout.  He witchhunted Alger Hiss into prison for being a Soviet spy and his own Vice-President was the first VP to be convicted of bribery and forced to resign office.  Nixon existed in a nucleus whose orbit nurtured ethical breaches and illegality.

A few decades later, another President got caught up in a different kind of public shame.  The masses were appalled that Slick Willy had shot his load on the June Cleaver dress of a White House intern.  But before this affair, his purported indiscretions were widely known.  Where to start?  Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, the list goes on and on.  The only real shocking part of the whole thing was the universal unattractiveness of all the women involved.

On to the Tiger.  Sure he expertly marketed himself as the ultimate human being, a Nietzschean Übermensch if you will,  a man with no flaws, seemingly capable of any feat.  But we really knew nothing about Tiger save for what he chose to show us, and that was limited to the golf course.  He inculcated himself around an army of PR men who maniacally controlled all access their prize client.  But if you looked closely there were cracks in the Portrait of Tiger Woods.  His petulance on the golf course, going beyond mere cursing to throwing his driver so hard recently that it richoted and struck a bystander.  At the British Open, he relinquished a last day lead, something that he'd never done before.  Perhaps his tumultuous inner life had finally caught up to his incandescent public one. I noticed all these things and I didn't look too closely.  I don't even like golf.

The signs were there all along. No one knows anybody, not that well, and anyone is capable of anything at anytime.  Betrayal is always around the corner.  And remember, what people think is true is often shaped by the context in which information is presented to them and their willingness to be deceived -- even by themselves.