Chicago Satellite Rally to Restore Peace and/or Fear
Anthrophilia |
Citizen Journalism from an Anthropological Perspective |
He ate cashews with chopsticks waving them at me as in a way that was both holy and dangerous—saying,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ayngelina/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
“Social Darwinism.”
Like they were magic words and he was turning me into a handful of silk roses.
He’s talking with his face close to mine and his words fall against my lips and conjugate with my breath. His skin smells like cashew butter and I ask him if he’s ever seen a cashew in its shell, but he’s never thought about it, so he ignores me.
“Nobody says beautiful things anymore—adaptation for survival.”
And he is trying to make the world a better place—starting with me.
“History is a survivors game so you gotta stay around for a little while,”
Even though society was going to hell you gotta stick around—to cry into the annals of history with your lungs filled with volcanic ash and your chest out expanding against the stars and with your eyes leaking nostalgia down your cheeks and—you look like you just made love to the devil himself. And “you gotta keep me company—because I don’t want to be alone and if you live without risk, might as well be dead. Defeats the hole point of survival of the fittest.”
To get to the files of history you have to pass by history's receptionist.
Because history is a survivors game whose score is tallied by the winners. The files are kept in a storage room belonging to the ages. To get to the files of history you have to pass by history's receptionist—and she’s a large woman of indeterminable heritage and she sits like a sentry in front of the past. She has a bottle of white-out that can be used on your legacy—so you got to be nice to history's receptionist when you go to see her. I suggest you give her cigarettes—I know she is fond of Turkish tobacco. Shakespeare always brought her chocolates.
Because—History is a game for the living,
“You gotta stay around for a little while longer. Keep your DNA in the gene pool”
And when you’re sitting in the lobby of history and you’re trying to look like you belong there and the receptionist hasn’t said anything in a millennia and you’re waiting for the one and only forgone conclusion and you go looking for the bathroom and tripping over forgotten genocides and lost wars—listen for the murmurs of the stoics in your footsteps, laughing hard with every footfall—because when you are dead, all of existence becomes an inside joke—it is all an inside joke that is suddenly very, very funny.
“The world has all gone downhill and you only live once—but even if you live more than once you only remember this time—so you might as well be happy and do what you want.”
He is saying this with his cashew flavored breath and his lips the color of fairies blood and he is trying to convince me to sleep with him.
“Because you’re always going from one immediate past to the next—and when you die it all catches up to you—but by then it is too late, because you’re already dead, so there will be nothing to regret.”
There will be nothing to regret.
And nobodies going to remember this anyway—
Created with flickr slideshow.
Just wanted to share some photos I took of a park dedication that occurred this morning in Printer's Row.
Printer's Row Park’s ribbon cutting was executed by Alderman Robert Fioretti (who looks a little like William Shatner) this morning just after 10am. The event was attended by an estimated 150 people who mingled and ate free snacks supplied by several neighborhood merchants. The park's one grassy area sits atop a raised platform and was crowded by dogs and their owners. One of the park's designers was overheard explaining that the grassy platform was designed to keep dogs off. The dogs and their owners did not seem to mind the sentiment and continued to frolic.
Melvin Lee had big shoulders and thick arms and long black hair he pulled into a ponytail, he needed glasses he didn’t have and he liked to smoke when he drove.
Melvin Lee was some kind of Asian, but in the southwest he passed for Mexican—he told people he was Navajo, “a real fucking Indian,” he said.
As soon as he had the money—he was moving to Spain to be with his people, he wanted to raise goats—or to raise hell, on the mountainsides. He said I could come with him—that I could be one of his people.
Melvin Lee kissed too hard too fast, and drove 60 through the hills playing chicken with the curves, never touching the break, never slowing down, one arm resting on the windowsill, one hand on my leg.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Melvin Lee had a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his shoulder—she tasted like clove cigarettes. She smelled of sweat.
He was dark from the sun—and coarse—he had large lips and big teeth, he played air guitar better than anyone—feeling it with his body.
I told him—smoking could make you dead—he said smoking only killed old people, and Melvin planned to die when he was 29.
Melvin knew God was some big Hispanic guy—with long hair and a mustache—whose hands were callused—God looked like the men we had grown up with, God would look like Melvin Lee.
Melvin and I drove into the desert—late monsoons—the desert smelled of rain, the cactuses were filled to capacity and everything felt like it really existed.
Melvin and I were in the desert listening to AC/DC on the radio, lying on the hood of his pickup truck, he put his hand on my stomach and growled affectionately, “I would kill you if you ever left me.” He said. “I would kill you if you ever tried to leave.”
I saw the face of God in Melvin Lee.
I thought I was in love with him, and I thought he was in love with me.
Self-publishing isn’t just for poetry majors anymore.
Gone are the days of angst-filled hand-stapled “zines,” replaced by angst-filled perfectly bound books. With the help of websites like Lulu.com, iUniverse.com, and dozens of other specialty printers, self-published books can be indistinguishable from books created by traditional publishing houses. They can have snazzy covers, color pages, professional looking layouts, and even bar codes with ISBN’s. Without having to ask permission or seek the approval from old-school publishers, authors are taking their literary destiny by the horns and changing the face of publishing.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flyzipper/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“The advent of indie bands and indie movies has lifted the stigma bit,” said Amy Edelman founder of IndieReader.com, in an email. “The consumer is looking for something more genuine that hasn't been chosen by a committee. And the writer wants to create something that is...and remains...theirs.”
Self-published authors usually hire a printer for a small fee. That printer will print and bind any material that you send them. There is no vetting process. There are no editors or agents to work with, and no help in selling the finished product, though those services can easily be purchased through many printers’ websites. Many “print-on-demand” printers set no minimum quantity for their orders. This allows the author to order as few as one book at a time, eliminating much of the up-front cost that weighs down traditional publishers.
“Plus you get to keep a larger percentage of the sales,” said Edelman.
The biggest player in print-on-demand is a 5-year old company called Lulu.com. Lulu states on their website that they published 400,000 titles in 2008. In contrast, traditional publishing decreased by 3.2% between 2007 and 2008, publishing only 275,232 new titles and editions according Bowker.com, widely considered the authority on tracking the publishing industry.
A traditional publisher was “able to get my book in book shops, set up reading and signing appearances, set up interviews, and send out review copies,” said Greg Prato of his experience with a traditional publisher. “All of these things are difficult to do if you put out your book yourself,” he said, having later self-published No Schlock...Just Rock!
The self-publishing marketplace has become very crowded and is taking an ever bigger slice of the shrinking publishing pie. In an industry that has been struggling for years under the weight of dwindling readership and rising costs, self-publishing is flourishing.
“It’s less expensive than it used to be and it’s much faster than traditional publishing, which can take years,” said Edelman.
The authors that have self-published vary across the spectrum from retirees to former television stars, writing anything from textbooks to romance novels. Self-publishers like to point out that self-publishing is not new. Some self-published authors include Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence and Stephen King, according to bookmarket.com, a website aimed at promoting self-published authors.
"Within a month I had earned more than I had in a full year with a traditional publisher."
Some authors turn to self-publishing because they are unable to find an agent or entice a traditional publisher on their own. “My Blind Melon and Tommy Bolin books I could tell were for a specific group of fans, not very mainstream,” said Prato. “I did ask around to a few publishers that I had contact info for, and they passed.”
Some have chosen to self-publish after being disappointed by their experiences with traditional publishers.
“Within a month I had earned more than I had in a full year with a traditional publisher.” Said Andrew Campbell, self-published author of the non-fiction book The Iliad of Homer: A Study Guide to Richmond Lattimore's Translation.
But self-publishers shouldn’t expect to quit their day jobs.
“I made some money - but not a life-changing amount or anything,” said Prato, whose life as a music journalist has provided the fodder for his self-published works.
According to a 2008 interview published in the New York Times, an executive at iUniverse named Susan Driscoll said most titles will not sell more than 200 copies. Most of those copies will be sold directly to the author, who then distributes them to friends, family and local book sellers.
“I would not be able to support my family on the income I make from my writing, but it is a significant supplement to my other income,” said Campbell, who writes textbooks for homeschoolers.
But not all genres are created equal in the self-publishing marketplace. Non-fiction leads the way, especially those in niche markets who already rely on the internet to reach their select audience. Of the 100 books listed on Lulu’s top sellers list, there were only three novels, one lone book of poetry and about 96 how-to books, memoirs and technical references. Most of those non-fiction books were aimed at the education and business markets. According to Bowker.com new titles in the business and education categories rose 33% and 14% respectively, across the publishing industry.
Travel and fiction trailed from previous years, with new titles down 15% and 11% respectively. Analysts at Bowker.com suggest this is due to the falling economy and loss of disposable income. Readers are channeling their limited recourses to self-improvement, showing their desire to gain job security.
There are a few notable exceptions. The self–published novel The Shack by Wm. Paul Young became a New York Time best seller and is soon to be published in 30 different languages, according to the writer’s website. The novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova met a similar fate, gaining notoriety as self-published work before being picked up by a major publishing house and climbing best-seller lists.
But it seems most of these self-published authors are not in it for money or success. They have something to say and a desire to get their stories, guides, and charts out to the rest of the world. Even if the distribution is limited, and the self-promotion is difficult, many self-published writers have no regrets.
“I've gotten nothing but positive feedback. And I'm not just B.S.ing about this either - look up all my books on Amazon.com,” said Prato. “Kind words from [my subject’s families] were really fantastic as well, and made all the hard work well worth it.”
Aspiring Anthropologist: If you were to put a monetary value on me what would that be?
Informant/Fiancé: Like, what you earn?
AA: No, replacement value—Blue Book me.
I/F: A million dollars.
AA: A day?
I/F: Oh, you wanted per day? Then, one thousand dollars.
AA: You think you could get someone in here to do for you what I do for you for a thousand bucks?
I/F: What you do…like not cook, and not really clean and not let me play video games that much and…
AA: Companionship. That’s what I do for you, I’m your best friend and your lover…do you think you could get that for one thousand bucks a day?
I/F: And she would do laundry too, maybe.
The women in my family live a very long time. Most make it to their eighties, some beyond that. I may live for another fifty or sixty years, barring any accidents. My informant estimates that for one thousand dollars per day he could purchase services from a wage laborer that are equal to what I provide to him. If you consider that there are 365 days a year and that I may live for another fifty to sixty years, my lifetime value to this particular informant will be somewhere between $18,250,000 to $21,900,000, and that’s not adjusted for inflation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamysk/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
AA: You owe me $1,825,000.
I/F: For what?
AA: Five years worth of my companionship.
I/F: Take it out of what you owe me. For my companionship.
AA: What do you estimate your value to be?
I/F: I’m priceless. I’m a gem.
I am not any good at cleaning house. I don’t mind grocery shopping, but I can’t cook. I won’t babysit any kids other than my sister’s, and they live 1200 miles away. I spend most of my time studying or getting ready to study or working part-time for a faltering civil engineering firm downtown. Any free time I have is divided between writing novels and plays and reading novels and plays and old National Geographic magazines. I also like to sit alone in coffee shops and watch people walking by.
It seems to me that most of the services I provide to my community are not easily monetized. Perhaps if I had some advertisement space that I could rent out, like a billboard across my belly or my forehead, then there would truly be a method for judging my value. I remember a few years ago a woman got two free tickets to the Super Bowl for painting a logo across her pregnant belly. I am not pregnant or in a high profile situation but perhaps I could get paid for this too. Maybe the Mexican restaurant around the corner from my apartment would see a value to their name being brightly painted above my navel as I walk around our neighborhood. “La Amistad: Make Friends With Your Taste Buds,” my tummy might say. I would like to get paid in tacos.
I write a lot. I’ve written several plays and even had one published, but there was no exchange in currency. I got “paid” ten copies of the play, and if someone someday produces it I will get paid royalties, perhaps in more copies of the play. Most of my writing lately has been academic, and so I barter my essays for grades and percentage points. When I have enough of these essay-paper-credits I will trade them in for a Bachelors Degree. I am told that a Bachelors Degree can then be traded for tens of thousands of dollars (perhaps, if I am lucky), and if a good negotiator, I will get tens of tens of thousands of dollars. It is a long process to convert academic essays into cash.
A more direct rout might be to sell my organs. I see advertisements on the internet and in newspapers from agencies offering ten to twenty thousand dollars to buy the eggs of healthy young women. If I am willing to carry someone else’s baby to term, there is even more money to be had. I could sell my plasma for fifty bucks a week and my hair once a year if it is over six inches long and not dyed. If I had the right connections I could even sell a kidney or part of my liver or a lung. But those numbers wouldn’t reflect the value of my life as much as the value put on saving someone else’s.
It is hard to see past the wage labor system that I know. My value as a best friend, a sister, a daughter and a lover is unquantifiable. In these roles I am a therapist, a personal shopper, a mess-maker and a back-scratcher, none of which I get paid in cash for. My informant and I have a complicated bartering system, sometimes the exchange is explicit (Thanksgiving with my family, Christmas with his) and sometimes it is subtler, paid in kindness.
AA: Babe, was there a single event that signaled your transition into manhood?
I/F: No.
AA: So, were you always a man? Was there a point when you became an adult?
I/F: I don’t know, maybe when I went to college.
AA: What about college?
I/F: Is this for another paper? The one on value?
AA: No, a different one, on liminality and gender.
I am worth approximately 22 million dollars, assuming I live to be 90 years old. That translates in to roughly 7 million tacos. “I don’t know if I can eat that many tacos,” my informant tells me. “Can I get some chorizo and egg burritos too?” Apparently, he is contemplating the exchange.
After a recent Chicago screening of the new movie Paper Heart, Charlyne Yi, co-writer and star of the film, led the audience in chanting her name. “I always wanted to do that,” she said. “I wanted to cry in the film, in hopes that someone in the audience would cry—did anyone cry?” She looked around the room and a few meek hands raised. “You did? I win," she said.
One week before the July 16th screening, visitors to aintitcoolnews.com, a popular film and television review site, had the chance to win tickets to a Paper Heart preview and post-show Q&A. Contestants wrote about a lesson on love that they had learned from a film. Steve “Capone” Prokopy, a frequent contributor to that site selected the winners and moderated the Q & A, which took place at Landmark Century Theater in Chicago.
“Why did you win and I didn’t win?” said Joe Shea, this reporter’s boyfriend, “My answer was funny too.” Having been informed by email that the screening was overbooked for the 200-seat theater, winners and their guests formed a line more than an hour before the 7pm show.
Paper Heart, directed and co-written by Nick Jasenovec, stars Yi (Knocked Up), Jake Johnson, and Michael Cera (Superbad, Year One). The film follows the awkward attempts of Yi and Johnson to discover the meaning of love as they travel across the country. In search of answers, Yi and Johnson interview experts on love including a romance novelist, a professor of biology, and a minister/Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas.
The boundary between fact and fiction blurs as the real filmmakers — playing fictional versions of themselves— make a real documentary. Yi, playing ‘Charlyne’ meets Cera, playing ‘Michael’ and romance blooms. “It’s a movie with documentary elements,” said Yi.
After the film Yi and Johnson answered audience questions. Asked how Michael Cera, who was not in attendance that night, was cast in the film, Yi said, “We’d gone through other actors, like Martin Lawrence.” The audience, and Yi's co-star, laughed at the idea of Lawrence playing Yi's awkward love interest.
“I want to see that movie,” said Johnson, with a chuckle, “but he had too many notes.”
“And we needed someone who was pretty low energy.” said Yi.
Asked how Johnson had been chosen for his role as the fictional director of the real documentary, Yi explained that Johnson was a friend and was attractive. “I don’t want to know if he can act,” Yi said of the casting process, “I would rather he just be pretty…We were joking it was going to be called Sexy Heart, but no one in the film is sexy but Jake [Johnson].”
Paper Heart premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the 2009 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Released by Overture Films, Inc., this film will be playing in select cities starting August 7th.
As for her next project, “I like writing stuff for myself to work on,” Yi said, “…ultimately I just goof around with friends.”
G-She’s good, she’s just not good for you.
B-Explain that to me. What does that mean? “She’s good, just not good for you.”
G-It’s like—Turkey’s good at thanksgiving, but you don’t want it on your birthday.
B-That’s your answer? What does that mean? I’m always happy with a little turkey and mashed potatoes—I mean, who would complain? Everyone likes turkey and potatoes.
G-She does bad things to you man.
B-The only reason you don’t like her is because she doesn’t think your dead baby jokes are funny.
G-Dead baby jokes are hilarious.
B-Not everyone has to like them.
(pause)
G-She talks like an English-major-flunky.
B-She has a big vocabulary.
G-She goes to art museums.
B-You go to art museums.
G-Yeah, but I don’t talk about it.
(Pause)
B-She makes me feel like I’m dreaming—
G-Turkey makes me sleepy.
B-I wish you could be friends with her.
G-Don’t get too gushy.
B-Don’t be bitter.
G-Don’t be weird.
B-I’m not being weird.
G-I feel like you are being weird.
B-I’m being weird? Ms. “Turkey’s-good-on-thanksgiving-but-not-on-your-birthday?”—you’re calling me weird?
G-You are weird.
B-I have to go for her. I called dibs on her and everyone heard me.
G-Who heard you?
B-Charlie and Frankie and the guys.
(Pause)
G-You shouldn’t eat turkey on your birthday.
B-But I love turkey.
G-Fine, but promise me something.
B-What?
G-Promise me something for real—
B-What already—
G-Don’t call me crying later.
B-I won’t call you crying.
G-Don’t call me.
B-I won’t call you.
(Awkward silence)
B-In my parents house, we have birthday cake on Christmas.
G-Birthday cake for who?
B-Jesus.
G-That’s weird.
B-Yeah—but I really like it.
