Monthly Archives: August 2003

Enlightenment Strikes!

Posted on by
4

After I dropped off the book I just finished reading, I stopped at the “New Books Just In” section of the library just to see if there might be something that looked interesting. Some new legal mystery with a kick-ass female protagonist maybe.
Hmm. A just-published novel by Ken Wilber. Ken Wilber. Wasn’t he that transpersonal psychology guy? Back in the 70s? I always thought he spelled his name Wilbur. I look at the photo and blurb about Ken Wilber on the back cover. The photo is of a young man wearing a Smilie button. The blurb says:
Ken Wilber, who turned 23 when this book was published, received his degreee from MIT in computer science and artificial life. [emphasis mine, and that should have clued me in right there.] He lives in Denver Colorado with his finace, Chloe Walters, and their dog, Isaac……
I go back to novel’s Table of Contents, which includes chapter headings such as:
Omega_Doom@FutureWorld.Org
And_It_Is_Us@FuckMe.com
Subvert_Transgress_Deconstruct@FuckYou.com
The_Conquest_of_Paradise@MythsAreUs.net
OK, so this must be a different Ken Wilbur…er…Wilber…. I go back and read the blurb on the inside of the front cover.
Ken Wilber’s latest book is a daring departure from his previous wiritings…combines brilliant scholarship with tongue-incheek storytelling…. he expounded in more conventional terms in his recent “A Theory of Everything.“
I scan through the first few chapters and see references to Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” and Stern’s “Me: the Naracissitic American.” I also see references to big tits and memes, cognitive malfunction and postmodernism, to sexdrugsand….
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! That doesn’t sound like the Ken Wilbur I used to know. That sounds like…..gulp…..
I take the book home so that I can figure out the Wilbur dilemma and further think about the connection between Wilbur/er and…..gulp….that other guy.
A Google search ultimately proves that Ken Wilbur is Ken Wilber. I can’t find any indiction of why his name is spelled two different ways, but when I compared a current photo of him with the 23 year-old guy on the book’s back flyleaf — yup, it’s the same guy. So, the old geezer is pretending to be a 23 year old geek writer. Uh oh.
That’s when enlightenment stikes.
Rage Boy is Ken Wilbur/er’s Evil Twin, his Dark Side. the other side of his coin. I mean just look them:
eviltwin.jpg
Rage Boy: long hair, down-turned eyes, bushy eyebrows, tight closed mouth, angular face, a look to intimidate if not scare you off completely.
Ken Wilbur/er: bald, turned-up eyes, normal eyebrows, open smiling mouth, softly curved face, an open and inviting expression.
And now the dark Rage Boy side has taken over the enlightened Ken Wilbur side and the result is “BOOMERITIS: A Novel That Will Set You Free.”
Oh where will it all end!

PLEASE! Someone find a cure!

Posted on by
17

I sure hope someone finds a cure soon for that Geek Syndrome.
I went over to Comp USA with my friend P, who needed to get some guidance (and, she figured, some kind of software) to clean out the old computer that her old (as in “former”) S.O. left with her when he moved out, since he didn’t want it any more. Figures, right? She figures she can donate it somewhere after it’s cleaned out.
Well, someone told her she needed to “ghost” the machine, and I, being technologically retarded, had no idea what that meant. What I would do is go in and delete all the files that I want to get rid of. But what do I know.? Maybe I think they’re all deleted but they’re all still in there somewhere for someone else to find and blackmail me with.
Anyway, she goes up to the young man behind the desk and says that she wants to “ghost” her computer. What does she need to do, she asks. Can she buy software that will do this for her.
So, this tall, lanky low-browed geeky kid looks at her, his eyes glaze a little, and eventually he starts to tell her that she needs to make a boot disk. “How do I do that,” P asks, further explaining that she knows nothing about computers and she has an old one that someone might be able to use but she needs to get all the stuff that’s on it, off it.
Another five minutes of this kid spewing gibberish to two totally uncomprehending middle-aged females, and he finally suggests that we go over to the repair guy and ask him.
Heh. Right. He wasn’t much better, as he repeated some of the stuff about making a boot disk and and re-booting and didn’t she get a boot disk with the computer and something about going into Control Panel…….. But somewhere in all of that guy’s incomprehensive monologue, I did manage to figure out that if one “ghosts” a machine, the whole hard drive gets wiped out, including the operating system — a virtual lobotomy resulting in a very real tabula rosa and a pile of bolts that are not of much use as a gift to some poor kid who can’t afford to buy a new computer.
Someone needs to teach these tech service guys to ask the right questions and respond with understandable answers.
Questions like: Why do you think you need to ghost the machine? Is it that you want to remove all of the files and folders that have information in them that you don’t want anyone else to get hold of? Do you want someone else to be able to use the programs that are in the machine, like word processing and maybe graphics?
Possible answers like: You don’t want to wipe out the hard drive, and you don’t want to delete programs. But you do want to get rid of all the files with information in them. We can do that all for you here and it will cost you XXXX. Or if you want to do it yourself, here’s what you need to do: (and then give her the step by step instructions, which she can write down).
But it’s hopeless. “Listen,” I say to P, who I can see is all at sea. “I’ll come over and show you how to delete files and we’ll look in the Control Panel’s Add-Delete Programs to see if there are any programs you want to delete as well.” I figure I can delete all the temp files and cookies and anything else that doesn’t look like a program and that ought to do it for her. And, if there are some little bytes still stuck in that back of that fake brain somewhere, who cares right?
And it’s time for lunch, anyway. Someplace where there are no inarticulate, borderline autistic geeks, for sure.

Stumbling on the old love vs. fear thing.

Posted on by
5

Reading Dave Rogers post about evil, love, and fear prompted me to unearth the following poem, based on a true happening. Unearthing the poem has prompted me to plan to do an Open Mike poetry reading this Monday night. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing. This time I’m letting the fear go.
Hunting
On the rise beyond the stream
on Trout Mountain,
they say, he shot himself

Footloose in the Last Resort

Posted on by
1

Almost exactly a decade ago, I was footloose and free to take off for points unkonwn on a whim. A female colleague, whose sister opted out at the last minute from a trip to Key West that they had planned together, asked if I wanted to go in her sister’s place. I checked with my boss about taking vacation time; she said no problem and neither did my charge card balances; so I went.
I figured that Key West, which markets itself as the most southern point of the United States, must therefore also be the “last resort” in the U.S. So, there I was, footloose in the last resort, and I decided to take my tourist photos based on that theme. Lying down in the middle of various streets so that I could get my feet included in the photos caused a few odd looks from passersby — but wotthell, it was KEY WEST, after all.
KWcollage.jpg
Neither footloose nor free enough these days to physically take off on a whim for two weeks, blogging has become my “last resort” for easy fun and frolicking. I wonder how many other bloggers, feeling constrained by life’s circumstances, use this as their final frontier as well.
So, as my friend P goes about seeking out some other friend to share her time-share in West Palm Beach during the third week in November, I’m still here, footloose in my very last resort.
kalifoot1.jpg

Compatible Neuroses

Posted on by
1

On the spur of the moment, I rented two movies to watch last night, Solaris, which I mentioned in my previous post, and The Secretary. Each was recommended to me by a different friend. I saw both available at my local Hannaford, where I can rent movies for a buck each, so I got both of them, not realizing how relevant each was to current weblog conversations about relationships and compatible neuroses.
There was a secondary character in each movie who, coincidentally, was played by the same actor, Jeremy Davies. And the two characters he played were practically interchangeable. It was kind of spooky to have, at the same time, rented two supposedly totally unrelated movies about which I knew practically nothing and see the same actor in both looking and acting exactly the same.
Synchronicities like that make me pay close attention, and, darn it, if both movies didn’t serve as echo chambers for the conversations that prompted my last post.
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion” is the Dylan Thomas poem that reverberates through the love/attachment theme of Solaris. Love conquers all, even death. It’s fantasy, of course, on all kinds of levels, including the kind of romantic fantasy that keeps us dreaming of a Prince Charming with George Clooney’s butt.
Naked butts, the love/attachment theme, fantasy, and of course Jeremy Davies and his nervous hands, are all fundamental to The Secretary as well. Now how coincidental is that? Now I’m really paying attention.
The leitmotif for The Secretary is by Leonard Cohen, not Dylan Thomas, but, I’ll be damned, the message is the same.
Dylan Thomas:
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
Leonary Cohen:
If you want a lover
I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I’ll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I’m your man
If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I’ll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I’m your man
Ah, the moon’s too bright
The chain’s too tight
The beast won’t go to sleep
I’ve been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I’d crawl to you baby
And I’d fall at your feet
And I’d howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I’d claw at your heart
And I’d tear at your sheet
I’d say please, please
I’m your man
And if you’ve got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I’ll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I’m your man
If you want a lover
I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I’ll wear a mask for you.
James Spader is no George Clooney, but he does have that screwed-up bad boy dark-erotic (in contrast to light-romantic) magnetism.
Romantic fantasy is compelling, but so can be its neurotic-erotic shadow.
Psychosis, pathology — attachment, obsession — dominion, domination. It’s all about love.
Everything is always all about love.
And pain.

Keep it up, Bubala.

Posted on by
1

When Locke lets go of his flaming rages, he’s not just good, he’s superb. Maybe he gets inspired by challenges too. Whatever the case, this is worth the struggle.
And in the spirit of archetypes, his allusion to the old Howdy Doody show got me thinking about Mr. Bluster — sort of an archetype for RB, no? I wonder if he made that conscious connection or is it just my ever connecting brain.
Meanwhile, after a day of manic blogging, I’ve got to spend the rest of the week taking care of the rest of what passes for my life these days: my chiropractor appointment; my mother’s Aredia infusion (which takes half a day); a visit with my former colleague from Arizona (the free-lance job from whom enabled me to buy a laptop, which I still haven’t connected) who’s in the area; and getting ready for a visit from my cousins who are coming up this weekend. And my greying roots are way overdue for a touch-up. Such is life in the slow lane.
So, if I’m dark here for a few days, don’t panic. The most I hope to get done on this blog is update my blogroll, which hasn’t been touched much since I moved to this site from my old one.
Keep it up, Bubala.