Accidental Historian

Fixation

Go to the corner of Clark and Washington in Chicago[1] on pretty much any given weekday and you’ll see this guy.  He stands there holding up a sign that indicates he’s on a hunger strike.  He wears a vest that says he’s been on said hunger strike since 2006.  The vest also says he’s an outlaw wanted by the FBI.  That part always makes me giggle, since I’m sure that the FBI wishes all of their wanted outlaws stood on busy street corners holding up signs to the effect whilst weakening themselves through not eating.[2]  Really, criminal underclass, that’s just polite behavior.

The guy’s reason for his wanted-outlaw-on-hunger-strike status is that he hasn’t been given any visitation rights whatsoever for his child since, apparently, 2006.  Every time I see him I can’t help but think that there’s probably some sort of correlation between him being the sort of guy who can stand on the street corner in downtown Chicago day after day after day after day engaging in silent histrionics about his lot in life and being the sort of guy who’s not allowed to be around his children.  This is obviously armchair psychoanalysis of someone I’ve never once talked to, but there has to be something in that story about how the dude is creepily obsessive about things and has no sense of proportion and is also not allowed around his children.  He could also be some sort of pathological liar or something.  Again, I don’t know.  I tend to ignore the dude.

The last time I walked past him I found myself thinking about another guy I know.[3]  I met him several years ago and ended up talking to him a lot, because he’s the sort of guy who will stop you and make you talk to him for ten minutes.  The subject is always, always the same.  It’s about how his ex-wife is an emotionally abusive bitch who took his kid from him and won’t let him have visitation rights.  One time he even pulled me aside and told me the statistics about child abuse.  They apparently skewed pretty strongly to the direction of men = gentle, loving, and unfailingly kind, while women = emotionally, mentally, and physically abusive crazy people who probably shouldn’t be around children at all.

Eventually I learned that there’s a term for that particular guy: Men’s Rights Activist.  He would color my interactions, such as they’ve been, with MRAs since then, especially after I learned that the stats he threw at me weren’t even an example of lying through statistics so much as they were an example of flat-out lying.

Other people I know also know that second guy.  Through them I recently found out he wrote a book.  I briefly handled the book, what was extremely obviously self-published, but I didn’t read it and don’t want to.  I was told, however, that he refers to himself time and again in said book as a nice person and a kind person and a patient person.

I was also told by someone that knows me and that other person that his stories of his crazy ex-wife reminded them of me and my beloved stories about crazy girls.  A year or so ago that sort of comparison would have bugged the shit out of me.  I’d rather not be compared to that guy, since he’s obviously an angry, overly fixated individual who wants the world to know that his problems aren’t his fault and everyone else is out to get him.  I’m not like that at all, since I’m, y’know, me.  And I’m different.  Because I said so, that’s why.

Since I’m being introspective about things these days I took that comparison in stride and I actually thought about it.  The fact is that there are things I have in common with that guy.  There are things I have in common with the crazy dude who thinks the FBI is out to get him due to his child custody issues.[4]  There are things I have in common with the MRAs and the Nice Guys of the world.  It’s important to recognize what those things are and how to not be that person.

Before I go on, however, it’s important to bracket off a thought.  There are actually people who have a raw deal.  There are men out there who have gotten screwed by the justice system in custody hearings.  There are women out there who have taken the kids and run for the border.  There are guys who have been screwed over by genuine bitches.  It happens.  Life sucks like that sometimes.  My intention here is not to minimize that.  My intention is to point out, though, that I don’t think that it happens nearly as often as those poor victims of abuse at the hands of crazy bitches would have you believe.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a, for lack of a better term, matrix of beliefs/attitudes/qualities that go in to creating one of these guys.  In no particular order:

Self-absorption/narcissism
Self-deception/cognitive dissonance
Passivity
Obsessiveness/fixation
Helplessness
Black-and-white categorization
Externalization of blame and responsibility

Basically, it works thusly: guy meets girl.  Guy decides that girl is the greatest thing in the world.  Guy hopes that girl sees the same thing about him.  Guy sits around and waits for girl to realize it.  Eventually guy decides girl won’t realize it and decides that means that girl, like all girls, is a total bitch.

I also genuinely believe there is a certain type of woman who recognizes this personality type and takes advantage of it.  I think some are actually calculating bitches who use men, but others just kind of do it due to their own particular set of emotional issues and/or damages.  As such, I think there is a germ of truth to the passive guy’s whole, “Women are just bitches who want to take advantage of me,” thing, because they’re more likely to find themselves in the thrall of bitches who want to take advantage of them.  It’s a bit of a tautology, but I don’t think I’m just making that up.

That’s where the Pick-Up Artist/Nice Guy dichotomy comes in to play.  Take a Nice Guy and let him stew in his own juices of failure and lack of sex long enough and he’ll be ready and willing to flip that switch from “passive” to “aggressive” (or, really, “passive/aggressive”) and that “helpless” switch to “asshole.”  That black-and-white categorization means that they’ll think there are two types of men in the world: Nice Guys Who Never Get Any and Jerks Who Get All the Poon.

You stay in that place through self-absorption and self-deception.  You are right and don’t need to change and everyone else is wrong unless they disagree with you.  The only way to fix that is through honest self-assessment and realization that the world is a lot bigger and more complicated than you want to think it is.  That’s a tough thing to do.  It’s also a lot less satisfying than just saying, “Women iz bitches who be out to get me.  Fuck them.  Literally, if possible.”

Anyway…yeah.  Those are some thoughts that I think are important to put on paper.  Or, um, computer screen.  They also lead directly in to a bunch of honest self-assessment I’ve been doing for the past few weeks that I kind of want to articulate in the near future, especially since a lot of it then transfers over to the Dancing Monkey Project and my increasing realization that said project might actually be a really, really bad idea as conceived.

In short, I think it was meant to solve one problem in a way that actually probably creates and/or reinforces another problem/series of problems.  The problem it solves is more of a symptom than an actual disease.  So, uh, yeah.  Hopefully I’ll be able to explain this in a way that makes sense.

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[1]For the non-Chicagans out there, Clark and Washington marks one of the sides of Daley Plaza, also known as “across the street from City Hall” and “that big public plaza what has the Picasso statue.”

[2]I just got a brilliant idea for the next season of Burn Notice!  Are you reading, Matt Nix?  Also, if you are, I’m sorry about that whole thing with The Good Guys, dude.  The show had major flaws, but it was deeply enjoyable, sometimes in spite of itself.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go listen to some Foghat.

[3]I am going to be as circumspect as possible in this description, so be warned.

[4]Y’know, the more I think about that, the weirder it seems.  Unless his child custody stuff actually stems from a federal indictment I have no fucking clue what the FBI has to do with anything.

Everything About This is Awesome

Seriously.  Awesome.  Also, this is where said image comes from.  Go there and ask the artist to accept your money or adulation or something.

An Aftersquib to the Foregoing

So there's a postscript to my 8 am...um, post...that I feel the need to add, just because the whole thing was totally surreal.

I wrote that post at about 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon.  Whilst I was in the process of writing it Winamp decided to shuffle through three different versions of the Lost Immigrants' "Memories & Rust" in a row, also known as the only three versions of that song I have.  That's a song I associate very strongly with Her, so having that song playing while I was writing a post about having a dream about her was just freaking weird.



After that I went up to the Celtic Knot for some storytelling.  I walked in, walked around the wall in to the main dining room, and saw a table full of storytellers I kind of know but don't know very well.  As I was debating whether to invite myself in to the group I noticed that at the very next table was seated none other than her, who I have literally not seen at the Celtic Knot since October of 2008.

I retreated to the bar.  On the heels of weird dream and weird coincidence of "Memories & Rust" it was just more than I wanted to think about.

I ended up at the bar sitting next to this middle-aged, drunk woman.  Now, I've decided that I should, like, talk to people more.  She started talking to me, I decided to be friendly.  I immediately regretted it.

She told me not too long in to the whole thing that what she really wanted was to get me to start hitting on her friend.  The friend in question looks a lot like what I imagine someone I dated back about 13 years ago will look like when she turns 45.  If she puts on some weight between now and then.

So by that point I was annoyed and totally weirded out by, like, everything that had been happening.  I told my new "friend" that it wasn't going to work because I'd just met someone and, y'know, I was pretty in to that whole thing.  She wished me luck.  I was all, "Hey, I know how to not be an ass.  When did that happen?"  I mean, I didn't say that to her, it was more of an internal dialog thing.  Because, really, her friend hadn't done anything to me and I really didn't want to just be all, y'know, asshole-ish about it.

Then, somehow, the conversation turned to Texas.  There's the standard joke about how not everything's actually bigger in Texas, which I've used for much mileage since getting back.  I tossed in that, well, my car actually did get bigger in Texas.

She asked what kind of car I drive.  I told her it's a 2010 Mazda 6.

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry," she said.

This surprised me, since I fucking love my 6 and I can't imagine why anyone would say such a thing.  So I asked why.

"Well, y'know, it's not a very testosterone filled car," she replied.

I said something non-committal, which she took as encouragement.

"My husband and I both drive really big cars," she said.

"Well," I replied, "I find that driving a really big car is the same as announcing to the world that one has a really small penis, so I'm not sure why I'd worry about such things."

"Oh, well," she said, "At least you're confident in yourself."  She then said something about needing something to haul her menagerie around in.

I said, "Oh, for me it's just me and my dog, so I don't need that much space."

She asked what kind of dog I have.  I told her I own a domesticated coyote.

She decided she had to leave.

Then I went to the back and Jim Stowell told a few good stories, after which I got the fuck out of the Celtic Knot.  I have never left that place that fast.  I just did not want to stick around any longer.

Bits and Pieces

So I made it back from San Antonio in one piece.  My complicated feelings about Texas are now even more complicated due to the fact that my feelings about San Antonio are extremely not complicated.  That’s one hell of a city.  I love the place.

There’s an interesting thing about Texas for those who don’t know Texas.  There’s no such thing as a single, monolithic Texas.  The place is just too big and too spread out for that.  Dallas/Fort Worth is like a crappy attempt at a big Midwestern city with a lot of overcompensation in the form of Texas state flags and pickup trucks.  Austin is a college town.  Galveston is a low-rent New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama[1].  Houston is a big traffic jam built in the path of hurricanes.[2]  San Antonio is a lot more on the Mex side of that Tex-Mex equation.  It just had a totally different vibe than the other Texas places I experienced in Texas and it had a vibe I really, really liked.

The Alamo is totally disappointing, though.  I was much more impressed with the Menger Bar, due to the fact that it’s where Teddy Roosevelt recruited many of the Rough Riders.  I raised a bourbon in honor of TR.  Because if I didn’t I’m pretty sure his ghost would have haunted my ass and I did not want.

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Anyway, now that I’m back and recovered, I’ll be returning to some form of regular blogging.  I’m also working on a couple of other projects that I’ll hopefully announce in the near future.  So there’s that.

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On the subject of projects, you might have noticed that the Dancing Monkey Project has, thus far, been naught but sound and fury, signifying nothing.  So far I’ve done one thing that ended up being completely and totally not worth writing about.  Then I spent a week out of commission.  And I can’t believe January’s not over yet, since I feel like it should be March by now.  Life’s like that sometimes, though.

I’ve realized a few things over the past couple weeks, however.

First, the absolute best thing you can do for yourself in a dating context is to simply put yourself out there.  It’s a pretty obvious conclusion, but one that I seem to have missed.  I did, however, recently find myself in a situation where there were a bunch of guys and a few women.  Most of the guys clumped up, put their heads down, and just kind of interacted with each other.  Two of us, however, talked to women.  Nothing came of it, but two of us had opportunity and the other guys didn’t.  So, y’know, duh.

Second, it’s deeply important to work on yourself.  I am the sort who would be referred to as his own worst critic in most situations.  This is problematic.

Due to a large number of factors I felt like I returned from Texas with my tail between my legs and have been, for all intents and purposes, damaged goods since my return.  That’s not really the case at all, but it’s been my self-perception[3].  It’s also the sort of self-perception that really gets in the way of getting anything accomplished or feeling really comfortable professionally.  I’ve gotten a lot accomplished since my return and everyone is glad to have me back, but I haven’t felt like I’ve really been bringing anything to the table.

While I was in San Antonio I admitted that was how I felt.  This is the first step towards fixing the problem.

That same night I had a dream.  In that dream I ran in to Her because she had started working in my industry.  We started dating.  Then I woke up thinking, “Srsly, WTF?”  It bugged me and when a dream really bugs me I figure it’s my brain trying to tell me something, so I picked at it for a while.  Eventually I realized that I had that dream at the same time I’d admitted to the damaged goods thing and I realized that no one has ever made me feel like damaged goods quite like she did.

When you feel that way you just kind of get locked in to a pattern of bad behavior.  Even if you leave a bad situation behind you tend to fall back in to the attitudes and patterns that put you there in the first place.

So…yeah.  Take that for whatever it’s worth.

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[1]I liked Galveston.  I liked New Orleans and Mobile a whole hell of a lot more.

[2]I did not much like Houston.

[3]Have you noticed that I’ve been doing a lot of writing about perception of late?

Oops...

Stuff. Also, things...

So...this is awkward.

I do bar trivia on Tuesday nights.  Like, most Tuesday nights.  The fourth Tuesday of the month is actually Storytelling Guild night.  But, what I'm saying is, if I don't have something prepared going in to Tuesday I won't have Wednesday post.  This is also awkward, since I was intending to write up a bunch of posts over the long MLK weekend (my company has MLK Day as an official holiday), but then I didn't.  Why?  Because I was watching The Venture Brothers.

Allow me to explain something: The Venture Brothers is one of the three best shows on TV right now (assuming, as I am, that you're holding out hope that Community's "hiatus" isn't actually a prelude to cancellation, which it most certainly is).  Basically, there's The Venture Brothers, Community, and Burn Notice, with White Collar in fourth and fuck-if-I-know in fifth.  Seriously, though, it's either The Big Bang Theory or Mythbusters.

Why do I say this?  Watch:

Anyway, yeah.  So I was planning on working up a post on the train, then some dude came and sat next to me and proceeded to take all my elbow room.  I tried to get him to not lean on me, but he proceeded to tell me that it was my coat that was taking up all my room.  Sometimes I fucking hate the train.  Seriously.

So have some Wednesday YouTubery, instead.  First up, Roddy Woomble's strangely mesmerizing video for "Leaving Without Gold."



Seriously.  Even if you take away the obvious I can't not watch this video and I don't know why.  That also leads me to this video of "Waverley Steps," also known as the song that caused me to decide to take Woomble's whole solo folk thing seriously.

And for those who don't know, Roddy Woomble and Idlewild made one of the greatest songs of all time.  For freaking serious.

 

On the subject of YouTube, there's Puddin'.  I can't explain it.  Just watch it.  But be prepared, pretty much every single episode is engineered to offend someone.  It's hilarious, but not for the trigger warning or people watching at work set.



And for those who don't want to be offended, here are some dog pictures.  Here's Daisy hanging out in the snow.




Here's Oscar and Daisy waiting by the window for Christmas.

How Not to Argue, An Introduction, Part 3

Last time, on this series about whatever it is this series is about I took MovieBob to task for engaging in a whole crapload of logical fallacies in an attempt to argue that The Simpsons is still funny.  We discussed poisoning the well, ad hominem, and even the rarely-seen-in-the-wild-but-often-mentioned begging the question.  And I managed to make two posts where I only intended to have one.  Those two posts didn’t actually get to the end of the two video segments.

And now, for the thrilling conclusion…

I left the end of part 2 on a cliffhanger, specifically with this:  “In the context of Part 2 what he’s actually saying is, “It doesn’t quite occupy the same market niche it used to occupy and, as such, has changed.”  That’s not a value judgment at all, but an argument for modified utility.”  Anyone who watched the video to the end knows that this is exactly what happened, as MovieBob then goes on to make that argument in basically so many words:

Notice that I’ve chosen my words carefully.  I.E. I did not say that it wasn’t as good as it used to be, just not that it’s not precisely the same creature.  After all, what is The Simpsons?  This is actually harder to answer than it seems, because the show has existed and been a major pop culture force for so long that it’s more of an institution unto itself.

You know what I hate about this line?  It comes 45 seconds in to the second video in a series after I’ve already been listening to six minutes of being browbeaten and told what I think.  This, right here, is a decent introduction to an argument for The Simpsons still being funny.  It even serves as a lead right in to a rather good thesis statement.

But originally, in the before time, the long, long ago, it had a pretty specific identity.  The Simpsons was an absurdist parody.  My contention, then, is that the reason it’s different now is less because the show itself has changed, but that the world around it has changed, to the extent that almost everything it first existed to skewer, satirize, and parody, doesn’t exist anymore.

This, right here, is an interesting argument.  It even works with the original line of, “The Simpsons is still funny, you just haven’t been looking at it through the correct lens,” idea MovieBob was working with.  If he had simply started with the above quote instead of the histrionics and telling his audience what their personal histories were without having any backing for his statements, he could have made an interesting and thought provoking video or two.  He, of course, did no such thing.

And that’s why I wanted to use this video to talk about how people argue on the internet.

See, there’s something weird about how people argue on the internet.  Or maybe it’s just that the internet shines a spotlight on a weird tic in how humans have always argued.  Maybe it’s a little from Column A and a little from Column B.  Basically, though, there’s something about putting thoughts out on the internet that starts out with a person thinking, “I need to tell other people how and what they think, and then I need to tell them why they’re wrong.”

It doesn’t really matter who is doing it.  Members of various fandoms explain why other people don’t have the same level of taste they do.  People who like (or hate) a certain band or type of music tell other people why they’re idiots for not liking (or disliking) the same thing.  Religious people explain to unbelievers why they hate god.  Non-religious people explain to religious people why they hate logic.

It’s an endless cycle of solipsism.  It’s not enough for a fan to like something.  They have to explain to everyone else why they’re an unwashed Philistine with no taste, too.  The preferred way of doing this seems to be, “Start by telling a complete stranger what they think and why it is incorrect.”

So you get MovieBob telling you why you stopped watching The Simpsons.

The awkward thing here is that, really, from the one minute mark to the end of Part 2, MovieBob makes a really interesting and compelling point.  It basically boils down to, “The Simpsons were created to satirize an American entertainment monoculture that no longer exists.  Since it no longer exists, The Simpsons have had to become something else.”

Now, the problem is that he still runs his argument off the rails.  He basically says that since The Simpsons were designed as absurdist parody of a specific world, they couldn’t hack it in a larger world than the one they were originally intended to occupy.  The problem here is that The Simpsons have an advantage that no other show can possibly have: as a cartoon they can add new sets and new characters any time. So if they need to make a parody of something, all they have to do is draw a new picture or create a new character.

Not so long ago I was watching an older episode of The Simpsons that involved Kent Brockman.  For those who don’t know, Kent Brockman is the news anchor on the show and he’s a totally over-the-top parody of a news anchor…or, at least an over-the-top parody of a news anchor from the late-‘80s or early-‘90s.  I was watching the episode and all of the sudden a lightbulb went off and I realized that Kent Brockman is no longer over the top because the rest of the world has either caught up with or surpassed him.

That was the secret of The Simpsons.  They were hilarious, but they were also ahead of the curve.  Since they functioned as an absurdist parody of the real world that was still firmly grounded in reality they could (and often did) predict the trajectory of reality.

There’s the problem, though, that as reality itself has become more fragmented and absurd, it’s become hard to impossible to stay ahead of the curve.  MovieBob could have explored that angle, but he didn’t.  He was too busy insulting his audience.

There’s another point to be illustrated here, too.  MovieBob is trafficking in black and white thinking.  Either The Simpsons is still funny or it isn’t.  He kinda-sorta acknowledges that it doesn’t have to be an either/or at the very end of the video, but for the most part he ignores the possibility.  Notice that he can’t actually admit that The Simpsons might not be as funny as they once were.  He has to say that they’re different, then even say that they’re not as “relatable” or “vital” as they once were, but that’s okay, because they’re still funny.  Again, too, he’s arguing against straw opponents who think that anyone who dares say that The Simpsons are still funny is, on some level, a Josef Stalin apologist.

Moreover, I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but at no point during his eleven minutes worth of arguing that The Simpsons are “still funny” did MovieBob ever try to prove that the show was ever funny.  He didn’t illustrate his point with a single joke or set piece or anything else.  As such, the entire thing has one giant [Citation Needed] hanging over its every word.

So remember this the next time you get involved in an internet argument.

Also, for those who are wondering, I’ll be starting up my series on Lee Strobel’s Finding the Real Jesus this week.  This little primer on how to argue might just come in handy…

Looking Ahead: 2012 in Music

Any retrospective conversation about music in 2011 is incomplete without a look ahead to what I'm excited about in 2012.

So far I have seven items on my list.  Unless there are more that are currently slipping my mind.

The band formerly known as Seneca and now known as Senekah for reasons that I'm guessing have to do with copyright or something.  They've done the YouTube thing with the video for the first song off the new one, called "Human Relations."  The song itself is pretty zippy, though.



I...I have no idea what's going on in that video.  If someone can explain it to me, I'd be much obliged.

Also, I have one request for the album: there's a song that the band played, like, every time I saw them.  I don't know what it's called.  I don't remember any of the words.  I do know that it was awesome.  So, please, make sure that song is on the new album.  Otherwise I am disappoint.

Sons of Bill have an official release date of March 27th for Sirens.  The first track is "Santa Ana Winds" and it's available for download on their website.



Um...how do I put this?  Oh, right, holy shit!  "Santa Ana Winds" is an amazing song.  Download it.  Download it now.  I listened to it about seven times in a row on the train this morning while reading the chapter on Isaiah in Killing the Buddha.  It was amazingly apropos.

There's going to be new Lost Immigrants.  I don't remember when, though (April-ish, if I recall), and I know nothing about it.  Chances are good, though, that the album will be somewhere between above average and excellent, since that's kinda how James Dunning rolls.

The Lovehammers are expecting their new album to drop in early 2012.  They'd been making noises about it on Facebook and I finally got around to checking their website for confirmation.

On the subject of local bands and/or bands that start with "Lo," Scott Lucas has been indicating there will be new Local H.  I've heard three of the new songs live and at least one of them is amazeballs.  Scott Lucas will face quite the challenge from an upstart Chicago band, however.

Scott Lucas & the Married Men have also declared their intention to release a follow-up to George Lassos the Moon in early 2012.  There is one line in the news item that worries me: "An early 2012 release on a to-be-determined label is planned."  Considering that it took about 15 months for Local H to put out 12 Angry Months back in 2007-2008 due to label issues, I'm prepared for a longer wait.

Number seven on this list is one word, three syllables: Sound-gar-den.  Two more words: fuck, yeah.  There's no official date as of yet, but the last word I have is that they were almost done as of 12/27/11 and expecting a release in early 2012.

So there we have it.  I'm expecting 7 new albums in the first half of 2012, most likely by April.  I'm expecting some other, unexpected goodness to pop up at some point, too.  Most of the good stuff from 2011 wasn't on my radar at this point in the year and came out in June or later.  So while 2012 might just be front loaded with goodness, I'm hoping there's more in the pipeline.

2011 in Music

I actually don’t really know how I’m going to do this.  After last year’s music crop consisted of four albums and three EPs I’d kind of given up hope that there would be anything worth writing about in re: music.  Then I ended up buying nineteen albums that came out during 2011.  That’s 245 songs worth talking about.  Well, maybe not all 245 songs are worth talking about…

Anyway, I have no urge to do a Top 10 of 2011 or anything.  For one thing, there are six different albums I’ve put in the top spot over the course of the year.  For another, it’s not like it matters.  Also, when it gets right down to it, there isn’t a clear winner in the category, so there’s no need to get too worked up.  Instead I think I’ll give out some silly awards in completely made up categories.

Individual song kudos up first.  Lists are in the order in which I thought about them.

1.  Best driving songs:

Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, “Empty Highway”
Foo Fighters, “Dear Rosemary”
Over the Rhine, “Rave On”
Social Distortion, “California (Hustle and Flow)”
The Wheeler Brothers, “Mississippi”
Derek Larson & the Leavers, “Wichita”
Matt Nathanson, “Queen of (K)nots”

2.  Best walking around Chicago songs:

Roddy Woomble, “A New Day Has Begun”
Roddy Woomble, “Roll Along”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “(I Wanna Live in a Dream In My) Record Machine”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “Dream On”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “AKA…What a Life”
Mike Doughty, “Weird Summer”
Mike Doughty, “Vegetable”
Mike Doughty, “Na Na Nothing”
Mike Doughty, “Into the Un”
Mike Doughty, “Day By Day By”
Mike Doughty, “Rational Man”
Matt Nathanson, “Modern Love”
Matt Nathanson, “Mercy” (Has anyone noticed a theme to this category yet?)
Wheeler Brothers, “Just Another City”

3.  Best quiet/slow songs:

Mike Doughty, “Telegenic Exes, #2 (Astoria)
Mike Doughty, “The Huffer and the Cutter”
Over the Rhine, “All My Favorite People”
Over the Rhine, “Only God Can Save Us Now”
Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, “Play On”
The Waterboys, “Sweet Dancer”
Flogging Molly, “This Present State of Grace”


4.  Most epic songs of 2011:

This requires some explanation, I guess.  I like songs that I call “Epic.”  I described the concept in my infamous “Coldplay Sucks” post, but it’s just kind of a thing.  I suppose it can best be described as a song is epic when I can see it and feel it.  So…yeah, that helps no one.  Either way…

Roddy Woomble, “Old Town”
“Old Town” is basically a classic epic song.  It starts out slow and quiet, with just an acoustic guitar.  Then Roddy starts singing, with only the barest of backing vocals.  At the 55 second mark an electric guitar kicks in, the backing vocals kick up a notch, then Roddy downshifts in to the bridge.  Eventually the whole thing just gets big.  This here YouTube video doesn’t really get the epic-ness of the album version across, but you get the gist.  Also, I like the addition of the violin/fiddle.

Flogging Molly, “The Power’s Out”
If you ever find yourself on the front lines of a street protest facing down a line of riot cops while armed with nothing but a rock and fueled only by your rage at system that’s been systematically crushing you, you just better hope someone has the good sense to play “The Power’s Out.”  Seriously, when the revolution comes I’m lobbying to make this the theme song.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “Everybody’s On the Run”
I, like all red-blooded American males, hope to one day find myself in a situation where I can walk away from an explosion in slow motion without breaking my expression of clench-jawed determination or looking back over my shoulder.  Should that day ever come I hope like hell this song is playing somewhere nearby.  Until that day comes, I just start playing this song as my train pulls in to Ogilvie Transportation Center in the morning.  Then, as I cross the Randolph Street Bridge halfway through the song I look at the city of Chicago spreading out before me and think, “Yes, today is going to be an epic day.”

It rarely ever is, but, that beats the shit out of not having that moment…

5.  My favorite songs of 2011:

Matt Nathanson, “Queen of (K)nots”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “Everybody’s On the Run”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “(I Wanna Live in the Dream In My) Record Machine”
Flogging Molly, “The Power’s Out”
Flogging Molly, “This Present State of Grace”
Foo Fighters, “Dear Rosemary”
RCPM, “Empty Highway”
RCPM, “Play On”
Roddy Woomble, “Old Town”
Over the Rhine, “Rave On”
Wheeler Brothers, “Mississippi”
Wheeler Brothers, “Portraits”
Derek Larson & the Leavers, “Wichita”

And to the albums.

Albums I was most likely to forget I bought from 2011:

Reckless Kelly, Good Luck & True Love
Micky & the Motorcars, Raise My Glass
Whiskey Myers, Firewater
Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What – Although, with that said, “The Afterlife” is a cool story song, while “Love is Eternal Sacred Light,” “Love and Blessings,” and the title track are legitimately good.

Most disappointing albums of 2011:

Cody Canada & the Departed, This is Indian Land

Cody Canada was the Canada in Cross Canadian Ragweed, one of the absolute best of the Texas Country scene.  They broke up in 2010, but Canada quickly put together a new album with a new band.  In retrospect, that was probably a bad sign, as it makes This is Indian his first post-divorce drunken hook-up after a 10 year marriage.

Either way, I saw Sons of Bill open for CC&tD at Joe’s on Weed Street in November.  I was far more excited to see Sons of Bill.  That was a good call on my part.

Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, Unida Cantina

I don’t know what it is about this album.  It’s not bad, really.  It’s just not that good.  I suppose that’s where I ended up with RCPM, where anything less than great is a huge disappointment.  There’s a bigger problem, though, that it’s a bog-standard RCPM album.  It’s a couple good songs and a bunch of interchangeable songs that could also have been songs off of Americano or No More Beautiful World.

Most interesting premise that went nowhere of 2011:

The Waterboys, An Appointment with Mr Yeats

It’s an album made up of Yeats poems as transposed to music by Mike Scott.  In theory this is cool.  In practice, it turns out that Mike Scott is much better working with his own words.  Or Mr Yeats is best not put to music.  Maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B.

Album I know the least about from 2011:

Cord Carpenter, Nights on the Old No. 9

Cord Carpenter was the lead singer of the extremely short-lived Austin rock band The Criminal Kind.  I know this because I saw The Criminal Kind open for RCPM at the Aardvark last June and ended up walking out with a copy of their EP.  They then dropped off the face of the Earth and there’s so little information about them that I’m not entirely convinced that anything I’ve written in this paragraph is actually true.

Either way, I learned about Nights on the Old No. 9, like, three weeks ago.  I finally did something about it a week ago.  It’s more traditional country-esque than I expected.  It’s not bad, though.

Albums I was most likely to listen to from/in 2011:

Wheeler Brothers, Portraits
Derek Larson & the Leavers, Takers & Leavers
Matt Nathanson, Modern Love
Mike Doughty, Yes and Also Yes
Roddy Woomble, The Impossible Song and Other Songs
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

And, when it gets right down to it, my final choice of album of the year would have ultimately come down to Mike Doughty, Roddy Woomble, or Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.  I am totally okay with leaving that as a three-way tie.

How Not to Argue, An Introduction, Part 2

So we’re back to MovieBob and The Simpsons.

For those who don’t remember, I started in on a new tag called “On Disagreement” last Wednesday.  My goal in doing this is to tie in my various other new projects on apologetics, perspective, and history to a larger concept on how to make arguments.  MovieBob afforded me a perfect opportunity to start this off with how not to make an argument.

If you recall, the video in question was called “Why the Simpsons are Still Funny,” but rather than argue that point he set up a strawman argument of Simpsons fans who stopped paying attention and are now just being dicks about it.  Because it’s apparently cool to hate on The Simpsons.  Or something.  We’re all hipsters now, I guess.

Anyway, MovieBob starts out Part 2 on exactly the same foot.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : The Simpsons Is Still Funny, Part 2

Last week I said that the Simpsons was still funny, a phrase which, on the internet anyway, is right up there with saying, “Y’know, that Stalin wasn’t that bad of a fellow,” or, “Minecraft is overrated,” or offering up for discussion whether Friendship is Magic or Adventure Time is the better show.

That’s right.  He got 17 seconds into the video before he Godwined himself.[1]  Now the obvious counter-argument to my point is that he was playing off the Stalin reference for laughs.  This counter-argument is technically correct.  I have absolutely no doubt this was a joke and since it is the internet there is a cadre of people who will immediately compare anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot.

Except there’s that corollary to Godwin’s Law that’s basically achieved a level such that it’s indistinguishable from the Law itself: the first time someone invokes the Nazis the discussion is over and that person automatically loses. Invoking Stalin is Godwin by proxy, while accusing you opponents of immediately Godwinning your argument is basically the same as invoking the Nazis by proxy all on your own.  Does that make sense?  No?  Crap.

Comparing someone disagreeing with you about something inherently meaningless to Hitler, Stalin, or Chairman Mao is a failure of an argument.  So in immediately saying, “My opponents are undoubtedly comparing me to Stalin apologists right now,” MovieBob starts off his video by saying, “My opponents are unreasonable and should not be listened to.”  This is what is known as poisoning the well.

I’m going to ignore the Minecraft and FiM/Adventure Time thing, by the by.  There are two reasons for this.  First, they’re proportional arguments.  Second, I don’t play Minecraft or watch either show and don’t intend to change that any time soon, so I don’t care.

Anyway, now that MovieBob has established that his opponents are unreasonable people, he goes back to his main argument.

Though I stand by my overall premise that the widespread disillusionment with this particular series has more to do with a change in the audience’s habits and expectations than it does with some consistent drop in overall quality I do agree that The Simpsons isn’t quite what it used to be.

I’m going to break my response in to three parts.

1.  “Though I stand by my overall premise that the widespread disillusionment with this particular series has more to do with a change in the audience’s habits and expectations than it does with some consistent drop in overall quality…”

This is problematic, since he never actually proved his original premise.  This is what is known as argument by assertion.  It is also a rare example of an actual case of begging the question.

Begging the question is right up there with ad hominem on the “misunderstood logical fallacies” scale.  I tackled the ad hom in the footnotes last time around and DagoodS chimed in with a more directly useful example in the comments.  I will refer you to those for that discussion.  Begging the question is a similar beast since people tend to get bogged down in the actual name and miss what it means.  In common parlance the term “begging the question” has come to refer to what is actually closer to an argument by assertion: Person A makes Unsupported Argument B, so people say, “Hey, that begs the question of where that argument comes from.”  This is wrong.  Worse, sometimes Person C says, “We’re stuck in this cave without a rope or a flashlight.  This begs the question of how we’re going to get home in time for dinner.”  This is atrocious.  If you do that, stop it.  Stop it right now.

MovieBob’s case to make is that The Simpsons is still funny.  Or, at least, that’s what he claims.  As such, the part of the quote I’ve broken in to part 1 up there serves as MovieBob’s summary of Part 1 of the video titled “The Simpsons is Still Funny.”  As such, MovieBob’s argument in Part 1 can be summed up as, “The Simpsons is still funny because it hasn’t actually stopped being funny.”  At that point it’s basically a circular argument, which is also often mistaken for begging the question without actually being a case of begging the question.  In this case, though, the bit where MovieBob found it necessary to take us through the series of steps about how the fans have changed and expectations have changed in order to argue that The Simpsons is still funny without ever actually offering a single shred of proof that The Simpsons are still funny is why this is a case of actual begging the question.[2]

Or, in plain English, MovieBob went from Point A of “The Simpsons is still funny” to Point C of “The Simpsons hasn’t gone downhill” through Point B of “people just have incorrect expectations of the show.”  All three of these are offered as self-evident and mutually supporting facts even though none of the facts can stand on its own or is even remotely shown to be fact.[3]

2.  “…I do agree that The Simpsons isn’t quite what it used to be.”

After arguing that his opponents are irrational actors with ridiculous expectations, MovieBob moves to take the excluded middle and become the voice of moderation.  This, for the record, is exactly the same tactic I pointed out PZ Myers used in attempting to make his assertion that being an ass is actually a more reasonable position than being polite.  It’s a tempting position to take, but it’s also a bad faith argument.

MovieBob is basically setting a dichotomy.  There are people, he’s saying, who say that The Simpsons are still funny and, by definition, they’re saying that The Simpsons are still as funny as they’ve ever been.  There are also people, MovieBob is saying, who say that those people are total assholes who probably loved them some Josef Stalin.  MovieBob, however, is not one of those extremists at either end of the spectrum.  No, Sir.  MovieBob still enjoys The Simpsons because, goshdarnit, they’re still funny, but he wishes they were still as funny as they used to be because, hey, wouldn’t that be great?

The subtle trick here is that he’s ascribing both extremist positions to his opponents.  The assertion that anyone who disagrees with him is being irrationally prejudiced against new Simpsons episodes puts all his opponents on one end of the spectrum.  He then creates a space at the other end of the spectrum where they have put him that is, “Person who thinks that The Simpsons hasn’t changed at all.”  How do I know this?  Is it because I think I can read MovieBob’s mind?

Nope.  It’s that, “…I do agree…”  See, everyone?  Your old buddy MovieBob is totally reasonable here and he’s willing to listen to your assertions that The Simpsons is terrible and meet you somewhere in the middle in the, “Yeah, they’re not quite so good anymore.”  In short, MovieBob is saying that you are not making a reasonable argument and, further, you are ascribing an unreasonable position to MovieBob, making you a big ol’ poopyhead.

This doesn’t work, though, since MovieBob’s original premise is fallacious question begging based on a strawman argument.  How do I know this?  Because MovieBob hasn’t even bothered to defend his thesis and instead attacked a ridiculous position he ascribes to every single person who no longer likes The Simpsons.  I’m just re-stating this in order to keep myself honest and remind everyone of why I’m talking about this, lest someone accuse me of doing exactly what I’m accusing MovieBob of.[4]

3.  …Oops.

…

Oh, man, that one will never get old.  Unless it does.  And, actually, it kind of is getting old.  Ah, well…

3.  In the overall context of the video, MovieBob isn’t actually making an inherently consistent argument here.  His supposed reasonableness at the end with the “…I do agree…” clause is also not actually as reasonable or agreeable as it would seem.  This requires me to unpack a bit.

“I do agree that The Simpsons isn’t quite what it used to be,” sounds, at first, like MovieBob is acquiescing to the point that The Simpsons isn’t as good or as funny, for whatever values you want to use for “good” and “funny” as it used to be, for whatever value of “used to be” you want to use.  However, with this statement in its contextual place as the fulcrum between Part 1 and Part 2 it becomes readily apparent that “isn’t quite what it used to be” is not synonymous with value calls on “funny.”  In the context of Part 1 what he’s actually saying is, “It isn’t quite what you think it used to be,” since he’s already argued for a nostalgia-tinted look back on the part of everyone who doesn’t like the show anymore.  In the context of Part 2 what he’s actually saying is, “It doesn’t quite occupy the same market niche it used to occupy and, as such, has changed.”  That’s not a value judgment at all, but an argument for modified utility.

I do believe, however, that I will have to punt that argument in to a Part 3.  Why?  Because I managed to spend over 2,000 words dissecting 41 seconds of video that contained two run-on sentences.  In case anyone is wondering, this is why I can never finish a goddamn series on this goddamn blog.

Bleh.

---------------------------

[1]And it’s not even creative.  C’mon, people, choose Slobodan Milosevic more often.  Or go with Caligula, for the lulz.

[2]The absolute closest he came in Part 1 was to say that Season 14 had some good episodes.  Season 14 aired nine freaking years ago.  How “a decade ago” and “still” are even remotely congruent in the internet age is beyond me.

[3]And I now know why it’s so hard to distinguish begging the question from a circular argument.  Basically, if MovieBob’s argument was that The Simpsons is still funny because The Simpsons’ writers  still write funny jokes that would be a circular argument.  Moreover, it would not be a logical fallacy, since the circular argument isn’t actually a fallacy, it’s just an argument that relies on its own inherent truth to be shown to be truthful.  At least, for the value of The Simpsons actually still being funny due to the quality of the writing.

Or, to put it another, another (another?) way, MovieBob is making a circular argument with a logical fallacy thrown in the middle and it’s the fact that his entire premise relies on a faulty argument that anyone who disagrees with him is acting in an irrationally prejudiced way that makes this a begged question rather than a circular argument.  I think.  I’m still not 100% sure I’m making the correct argument here.

[4]This is one of the problems with any sort of argumentation.  It’s really easy to lose track of why you’r doing it in the first place.  In this case I don’t have to show that MovieBob is wrong, I just have to show that MovieBob isn’t making an appropriate argument.  However, in order to make the argument that, say, he’s projecting a fallacious position I have to show that he’s both making a projection and that the position isn’t one that’s reasonable.  In order to make a correct assertion that, yes, he’s begging the question I have to show that the premise itself is a self-supporting argument built on a fallacy.  That does require me to show my work.